In fashion. . .

This fall has seen the release of a couple of movies about the fashion industry, from the stylish and historical Coco Avant Chanel to The September Issue, a documentary about Vogue's largest issue, which is fascinating not so much for what we don't learn about Anna Wintour, as an inside look into some of the tough and quick decisions that take place while putting together the magazine (you'll also feel better knowing that even movie stars have really bad hair days).

But for something completely different, creative and powerful, check out Sally Potter's new film, Rage, now out on DVD. I've been a huge fan of hers ever since she adapted Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and I can also highly recommend her movie Yes - an unusual contemporary love story starring Joan Allen, in which all the characters speak in rhyming couplets. Potter just doesn't make films like anyone else and Rage is no exception. The movie is a series of documentary style "interviews" with various characters all involved with one particular fashion designer preparing to put on his big show. There's everyone from the designer himself, his models, his financial backer, his bodyguard, a pizza delivery boy recruited suddenly for the runway, and the manager of the factory where the clothes are made. Tragedy suddenly strikes the show (which is never shown on film) and the characters, including a Shakespeare-quoting cop, all react in different ways. The two standout performances are from two of my favourite actors. Judi Dench is excellent as a tough and bitchy fashion critic. There is a moment when she hears and has to react to something terrible happening offstage and the close-up on her face is just terrific.

Then there's Jude Law pictured here, who plays Minx - a narcissist terribly concerned with his/her beauty. The way his character switches from a tough, seductive model playing to the camera - oh, those piercing eyes - to someone feeling very vulnerable and scared is a pretty impressive bit of acting and certainly unlike anything he's done before. I loved it.

Jane Pyper, Toronto Public Library's CEO was one of the many speakers at the TD National Reading Summit. Here is what she had to say:

Five Principles Needed for a Canadian Reading Program

1. Recognize Literacy as a Fundamental Human Right


2. Reading Material Should Always Be Available and Free From Censorship


3. Need to Address All Audiences and All Ages


4. Need to Create Places, Time and Spaces for Reading to Happen


5. We Cannot Priviledge Reading: reading is reading whether it be a book, newspaper, comic etc.

I am currently attending the TD National Reading Summit. I have to tell you it is simutaneously inspiring, informative and overwhelming. There is so much to do! Out of the 150 plus attendees, the vast majority of the attendees are librarians and many are from across the country. The panelists and speakers have been discussing amongst many things National Reading Policies from other countries. Ingrid Bon, who is the Chair of the Children's Libraries Section at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions in the Netherlands, gave a detailed blueprint of how the Netherlands has enacted their National Reading policy. The challenge for them, as well as us, is how to create a National program when there are so many different stakeholders and it crosses so many juristrictions.

One of the many interesting things I heard was that in Richmond, VA, they are able to predict the number of jail cells they will need based on Grade Two reading scores.

Elisa Bonilla, who lead the National Literacy Program in Mexico, gave the Ten Commandments to Ensure Effective Public Policy which is crucial when developing a National Reading Strategy.

1. Long Term Shared Vision
2. Precise Legal Framework
3. Ambitious Goals
4. Actions That Promote Equity and Fairness
5. Regular and Sufficient Budgets
6. Capacity Building
7. Developing Human Capital
8. Continuity
9. Coordination of Efforts
10. Continuous Evaluation

The effect of National Reading Policies on both of these countries has been profound; as I am sure it will be on ours!

Stay tuned...more to come.

NYRB Challenge Book #9: In Parenthesis. . .

This book is one of the first NYRB Classics that I ever bought and yet it has been sitting unread on my shelves for years. Actually on one particular shelf - the top one among the many I have dedicated to books written by and about participants in the First World War. It's a crowded bookcase and this is one of the key reasons I started this challenge - it forces me to finally read books I have been meaning to get around to for eons.

In Parenthesis by David Jones is unlike any war memoir or novel that I have read. Jones himself experienced life in the trenches - he was twenty when he joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and he fought at both the Battle of the Somme and at Ypres. The book - it's hard to know whether to call it a novel, a prose poem or a memoir - covers the months from December 1915, to the beginnings of the Battle of the Somme in July, 1916. Unlike many other war narratives, it doesn't follow the experiences of any set characters; rather the seven parts are a series of intense visual, auditory and felt impressions. There are descriptive paragraphs of the landscape as the soldiers march through the countryside, or a detailing of what shells falling really sounds like, sandwiched between the conversational slang of the soldiers and the abrupt interruptions of commands. While certain "characters" do pop up throughout - Private John Ball, Lance-Corporal Lewis, Corporal Quilter - there's no single story line; our narrator observes them all as they come into his view, along with the minute details and challenges of living in such close quarters in the trenches.

Jones acknowledges in his preface that his war companions were a mixture of Welsh and Londoners, and the intermixing of these two groups was a major theme in his work. He writes about his fascination:

to watch them, oneself a part of them, respond to the war landscape; for I think the day by day in the Waste Land, the sudden violences and the long stillnesses, the sharp contours and unformed voids of that mysterious existence, profoundly affected the imaginations of those who suffered it. It was a place of enchantment.

That last sentence is interesting. I'm always fascinated by the reading materials of people in extreme situations - the First World War soldiers took a lot of different books with them to pass the time, both commercial and literary. Lots of Shakespeare and poetry made their way to France. (And Jane Austen too if Rudyard Kipling is to be believed - I highly recommend his short story "The Janeites"). In Parenthesis is filled with references to Henry V, Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and the Welsh Mabinogion. But don't worry if you're not familiar with those works - Jones has provided plenty of his own footnotes. What's clear is that he identifies and embues his experiences with a literary and mythological tradition which doesn't glorify the war, but seeks to understand and place the horror in a continuing historical and even magical tradition. Perhaps this is necessary in order to survive it. And the real beauty of this novel is its language, veering quite literally into poetic form at times (particularly when the battle begins), or rigorously energized by a rhythmical, colloquial, modernist prose. This excerpt about the rumours flying among the men prior to the Battle of the Somme, gives a good example of Jones' style:

this groom's brother Charlie what was a proper crawler and had some posh job back there reckoned he heard this torf he forgot his name came out of ther Gen'ral's and say as how it was going to be a first clarst bollocks and murthering of Christen men and reckoned how he'd throw in his mit an' be no party to this so-called frontal-attack never for no threat nor entreaty, for now, he says, blubbin' they reckon, is this noble fellowship wholly mischiefed.

This was a powerful and moving read and my favourite book so far in this challenge. Just a note on a mistake on our website - the book isn't translated by W.S. Merwin (it was originally written in English). Merwin contributes the foreword. There is also an introduction by T.S. Eliot reprinted from an earlier edition.

NYRB has published a number of classics dealing with war themes. I've read and can recommend The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig (see my review here), and Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge (spies during WWII), and A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr (just a beautiful novel about healing after WWI).

Others include:

Apartment in Athens by Glenway Wescott (about a Greek couple sharing their apartment with a Nazi officer)

The Gallery by John Horne Burns (which takes a look at gay life in the military during occupied Naples in 1944)

The Singapore Grip by J.G Farrell (set during WWII and the invasion of the city by the Japanese)

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards (covers in part the German occupation of Guernsey)

Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte (WWII in Russia and Eastern Europe)

And the Giller goes to. . .

Congratulations to Linden MacIntyre for his Giller winning novel The Bishop's Man. Coverage of the event can be found here and here. Good review coverage of all the shortlisted and longlisted books can be found at KevinfromCanada - he was part of a Shadow Giller Jury that correctly picked the winner a few days ago and there are several reviews of MacIntyre's novel on the site as well. Not much international coverage as far as I can tell, although the Literary Saloon gives it a mention.

Remembrance Day Recommendations

One of my picks this Fall is Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel & Brett Witter. A great choice for Rememberance Day, this book recounts the fascinating yet little known contributions of a division of the Allied Forces in WWII- the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archive Section.
This group of 315 men and women from thirteen nations risked their lives in the final year of the war and beyond to track, locate and recover artwork and items of cultural significance that had been stolen by the Nazis during the war on the orders of Hitler. They also assessed damage and protected buildings of architectural or historic significance. Faced with so many stories he could tell, Edsel focuses strictly on the stories of one group of Monuments Men- the eight men assigned to cover France, the Netherlands, and Germany in the 11-month period from D-Day to VE Day. With no supplies, vehicles or radios, they had to use their wits in order to get the job done. The book is based on field journals, war reports, dispatches and orders from command, diaries and letters home as well as interviews with some of the survivors. Also included are the contributions of two French civilians, one of whom was Rose Valland, art historian, member of the French Resistance and one of the most decorated women in French history. Fiction readers might recognize her story too- the character of Rose Clément in Sara Houghteling's book Pictures at the Museum was based on Valland. A volunteer at a museum adjacent the Louvre, she spied on the Nazis throughout the occupation and her detailed notes were instrumental in the recovery and tracking of numerous works of art.

The book is very accessibly written and packed with incredible stories. Anyone interested in art or WWII history will find this of interest. The stories in here make your heart ache for all that was lost, but also profoundly grateful for the actions of these men and women, who risked (and some gave) their lives to save what they could of these important cultural artifacts for future generations to enjoy. It was just reviewed in the Toronto Star last weekend. Click here to read what they had to say.

Robert M. Edsel is also the co-producer of the related documentary film, The Rape of Europa, which was inspired by the book of the same name by Lynn H. Nicholas. He also wrote a mainly photographic companion book called Rescuing Da Vinci. Those in Ontario can watch the first part of the documentary on TVO Thursday November 12th at 10:00 pm, which is airing as part of their Masterworks series.

Also airing on TVO November 11th at 9 pm is the documentary Paris 1919, inspired by the book from Margaret MacMillan. We were lucky to see a screening of the film while up in Ottawa last week. Despite some technical difficulties, I found the film was absolutely fascinating. The visuals (archival footage from the time as well as dramatic recreations of the events) are fantastic.

CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Longlists Announced

It seems like just yesterday that the winners of the 2009 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals were announced, but I guess it is just the unseasonably warm weather here making it feel like it is still summer! Last Friday (November 6th) the longlists for the 2010 Medals were posted on the official website. The shortlists won't be announced until April 23rd 2010 and the winners on June 24th 2010, so I know it is a bit too early to be getting excited.


However, I love seeing which books make the first cut on awards lists, and these ones do read like a list of the who's who of the children's publishing book world. Plus they make a handy list to have on hand for holiday shopping! I particularly like these two awards as they are nominated and voted on by children's librarians, because let's face it, who knows kids books better?

Of course, it is always nice to see some of our Dewey Diva picks from the past year on these kinds of lists! You can read the full shortlists by clicking on the links below, but I've highlighted a few favourites from the past year.

CILIP Carnegie Medal 2010

Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge gets my vote! I have been a fan of this author since her first book Fly By Night, and all three of her books have now been Dewey Diva picks. I think Hardinge is one of the best and most versatile fantasy writers writing for kids today. She creates entirely different but fully realized new worlds in each book, touches on deep themes but always creates a highly entertaining and action-packed story. She is a language lover's dream, writing sentences that beg to be read aloud, creating new languages and dialects that are unique to her characters' background. Gullstruck Island was one of my Spring 2009 picks. Gullstruck Island is a land of jagged coastlines, quarrelling volcanoes (with names like Crackjem The Mad, Spearhead, and The King of Fans), and populated with creatures like elephant birds, and blissing beetles that can kill with the hum of their wings. Home to a native population called the Lace, the island has been overrun by newcomers from across the sea, the Cavalcaste, who are using up all of the arable land to build monuments to their dead ancestors. Forced to the edge of the island, living in villages literally clinging to the cliffs, the Lace do what they can to survive. Highly valued on the island are those who are born with the ability to send their senses 'travelling' independently outside their bodies. These 'Lost' can see a storm approaching over the sea, read messages posted on boards in towns on the other side of the island, and listen into conversations in neighbouring villages- all extremely valuable talents on an island whose treacherous landscape makes long distance travel slow and extemely dangerous. Not many of the Lace have been gifted with the abilities of a Lost- Arilou is the first in quite some time. Or is she? Shortly after the book begins, Hathin and Arilou must flee their home and everything they know when Arilou's supposed magical abilities are suspected to be fraudulent. The inspector sent to test Arilou's ability- along with every other Lost on the island except Arilou- die suddenly under mysterious circumstances during the test. Suspicion for the crime falls on the people of Hathin and Arilou's village and their neighbouring villages' fear and anger results in a massacre. Narrowly escaping, the two young girls have to outwit the bounty hunter on their trail and join up with a rebel group in order to stay alive. What starts as a flight for their own lives becomes a fight for their people as the Cavalcaste government uses the incident as an excuse to round up and imprison the remaining Lace tribes. Hathin must figure out what caused the Lost deaths in order to save her sister well as her people. The book touches on themes of native displacement, racial prejudice, violence (and so much more) and will keep readers on the edge of their seats. While published for middle grade readers, I think teens and adults will also enjoy this moving adventure story.

Other Dewey Picks on the list include:

• Killing God by Kevin Brooks (Published in North America as Dawn)- Janet's pick, Fall 2009
• Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur- Lahring's pick, Summer 2009
• The Midnight Charter by David Whitley- Lahring's pick, Fall 2009. Is it just me (and my inner SF geek) but does the guy on the cover of this jacket look like the evil emperor from The Return of The Jedi? Seriously, picture him wearing a black robe...

Kate Greenaway Medal 2010

• Big Bad Bun by Jeanne Willis, Illustrated by Tony Ross- Lahring's pick, Fall 2009
• Dogs by Emily Gravett - my pick, Spring 2009 (see my post from March 20th, 09 for more)
  Let's Do Nothing! by Tony Fucile- Lahring's pick, Spring 2009
• Moon Rabbit by Natalie Russell - this was a favourite of Maylin's (see her post from April 17 for more)
• Stick Man by Julia Donadlson & Axel Sheffler-Janet's pick, Fall 2009

Lest we forget. . .

My fellow Deweys know about my passion and fascination for all things relating to the First World War, and they are always alerting me to new books covering that devastating period. And I promise to get to them, I will! Tomorrow I'll blog about the WWI book I'm just finishing up now, but I wanted to acknowledge a couple of very interesting books that I'll be browsing through this week as well.

Oxford University Press published a much needed anthology of Canadian war poetry earlier this year. Canadian Poetry from World War I, edited by Joel Baetz contains more poems from John McCrae than just his famous "In Flanders Fields", and war poems by well-known Canadian poets E.J. Pratt, Frank Prewett, Duncan Campbell Scott and Robert Service to name a few. The collection also includes contributions by many women poets that I'm unfamiliar with, but look forward to reading.

From McArthur & Company comes Juliet Nicholson's The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War which is a great bookend to her previous book, The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911. Both promise a detailed and interesting sociological look at the many levels of British society before and after the war, including the many ways in which the lives of women were drastically altered.

And somewhat related, I'll also be buying a copy of L.M. Montgomery's The Blythes Are Quoted - a collection of short stories (some never before published) about Anne and Gilbert and their family, both before and just after the First World War. Readers of Rilla of Ingleside will remember that two of Anne's sons go off to fight in France, with only one returning.

Also for younger readers is Jack Batten's new book The War to End All Wars: The Story of World War I which provides a good overview of the conflict, and highlights the individual stories of Canadians who fought - both men who were famous such as Billy Bishop, and boys such as 18 year old Ray Goodyear, who was one of the many, many Newfoundlanders who lost their lives in France. I enjoyed Batten's earlier book, Silent In An Evil Time which told the story of Edith Cavell, the British nurse who was executed by the Germans during the war - it's also an excellent overview of the history of the nursing profession up to that time.

NYRB Challenge Book #8: L'amour dans deux langues. . .

I've had a busy week on the road in Montreal and Ottawa and I needed another short read. But even if I'd had all the time in the world, I still would have packed No Tomorrow by Vivant Denon, translated by Lydia Davis, as it really was the perfect accompaniment for my trip.

This entrancing little novella was originally published in 1777 and then revised in 1812 (this is the edition included here), and what NYRB have done is published a bilingual edition. With my dictionary close by, I read the French version first on the train to Montreal. But my French isn't strong enough to get all the nuances - I tend to translate too literally - and so was happy to follow it up with the English translation, and then go back and read certain sections in French again. Because this is a story of playful seduction (very erotic at times), and quite frankly, it reads better in French. I have certainly improved my French vocabulary.

Our main character is only twenty and by his own admission is quite naive. He is desperately in love with the Comtesse de -----, yet willingly allows himself to be seduced by her married friend Mme de T ----- only to find out that she has some ulterior motives of her own. But it's all part of the delicious game of love; as Peter Brooks writes in his introduction, No Tomorrow is about the "ethics of pleasure". And the setting plays an important part: moonlight, a terrace overlooking the Seine, an empty pavillion, comfortable cushions strategically placed to catch reclining bodies. It's just a lovely little interlude, both the romantic encounter and the reading experience. Fans of Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangeuses will enjoy this.

Just as fascinating is to read about Vivant Denon's life, which is charted in the excellent introduction. He accompanied Napoleon on his Egyptian campaign and was appointed as the first director of French museums, responsible for starting up the Louvre with many of the "spoils" that Napoleon gathered during his battles. He also had a private museum in his Paris apartment that apparently contained, among other relics, a drop of Napoleon's blood, one of Voltaire's teeth, some ashes of Abelard's Eloise, and a few hairs from the moustache of Henri IV. (Having just read Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence, I find this fascinating).

And to make the experience even more relevant, I had a few spare hours in Montreal and went off to the Musée des beaux-arts, where there just happened to be an exhibit of personal artifacts from the Napoleon era, including the famous hat he wore during the Russian campaign in 1812, furniture, clothing and paintings and etchings depicting him. I wished I'd written down the name of the artist - but there is a very interesting and quite amusing print, depicting the rise and fall of Napoleon purely through the changes in his hat. Do catch it if you are in the city. I can also highly recommend the J.W. Waterhouse: Garden of Enchantment exhibit if you are a fan of Pre-Raphaelite painting. To see the vibrant colours of those paintings up close is magnificent. And lots of lust (if repressed) and longing there too.

And now, if you'll excuse me - I need to find a comfortable divan to recline and languish upon.

IMPAC Longlist announced. . .

It's a huge longlist with 156 titles, but what a great list of reading recommendations! They come from 163 libraries in 43 different countries. The authors themselves represent 46 different nationalities and 41 of the titles are in translation. Lots of Canadians on the list too!
It's particularly great to see Steven Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo nominated so many times - not just from Canadian libraries, but from England and Finland as well.

You can see the full list of nominees and the libraries who nominated them here.

New Moon Contest!

The movie adaptation of New Moon, the second book in the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer, hits theatres November 20th 2009.

In honour of the occasion, I'm running a contest to win a New Moon prize pack consisting of the following:

• A complete set of the books in the Twilight Saga (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn)
• A copy of the Twilight 2-Disc Special Edition DVD
• A copy of the Deluxe edition Twilight Original Movie Soundtrack
• A copy of the Twilight Director's Notebook
• A copy of The New Moon Official Illustrated Movie Companion
• A copy of the New Moon Original Movie Soundtrack (which just debuted at #2 on the Billboard charts)
• AND... A set of 4 Twilight Journals in a collectible tin!

Sound like something you or your library would like to win??

To enter, please send an e-mail to rosalyn.steele@hbfenn.com with 'New Moon Contest' in the subject line. This contest is open to teachers and librarians in Canada only. Please provide your school or library's full mailing address with your entry. The contest close date is MONDAY NOVEMBER 16th.

There will also be 3 runner-up prizes of the New Moon Original Movie Soundtrack.

Visit this website to download countdown clocks to the movie release, wallpapers, posters, watch the latest trailers for the movie and find out what is going on with the third film, Eclipse.

And for fans in the Toronto area- some of the cast of the New Moon movie (Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz and Bronson Pelletier) will be visiting Much Music for a live interview on MUCHONDEMAND, Friday, Nov. 13 at 5 p.m. ET. Last year, Twilight movie actors Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Nikki Reed and Rachelle Lefevre visited MUCHONDEMAND and created total mayhem- some fans waited up to 12 hours in the rain! I would suggest anyone wanting to be front of the line this time around to head downtown VERY early! I think I'll just set the old VCR (very old school, I know!)

NYRB Challenge Book #7: A Classic Graphic Novel. . .

Whew, it's been a busy week with a lot of work reading, so I've only had time for a quickie. But NYRB can thankfully oblige; they have plenty of short little gems and this month, they've published their first graphic novel, (could any genre be more trendy right now?) which I read this morning on the bus to work. And trust NYRB to find not only a classic graphic novel (first published in 1969), but one in translation as well.

Poem Strip by Dino Buzzati, translated from the Italian by Marina Harss, is a modern retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. Orfi, who is a successful pop singer sees his girlfriend Eura disappear into a tiny door set into a wall, and taking his guitar, he sets off to follow her. He is quickly stopped by the Guardian, a brown sports jacket minus a body, who tells Orfi that while people in the underground may seem happy because there's no more sickness or death or sexual longing, they are also bored. Before letting Orfi in to search for Eura, he will have to sing, to remind the inhabitants of all they have lost. Buzzati then illustrates several of the songs before embarking on the final sequence when Orfi finally finds his beloved. And well, you all know how that's likely to end. . .

I'm not really a huge graphic novel fan, but I found this entertaining enough. It definitely is a beautiful package - full colour, glossy paper. The artwork is Edward Gorey meets Federico Fellini. And the author includes artists as diverse as Salvador Dali and Caspar David Friedrich in his acknowledgements. It is a bit dated though. Did I mention that whenever any women enter the underworld, they immediately lose all their clothes and get huge breast implants? Here is a sampling of spreads that are not x-rated, to give you an idea of the look.

Buzzati has also illustrated and written a children's book, The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily, that is published by NYRB's Children's Collection.

Paris 1919: The Documentary. . .

If you are a fan of Margaret Macmillan's bestselling book Paris 1919, or a history buff fascinated by the historical details surrounding the end of the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, then you'll want to check out the NFB's documentary based on the book. Starting next week it will be screening in a number of Canadian cities (in many cases at the libraries). You can find the full schedule here. Some of the Deweys will be in Ottawa next week - we're looking forward to catching it there.

The Museum of Innocence. . .

I've just finished reading Orhan Pamuk's ambitious new novel The Museum of Innocence, translated by Maureen Freely. This is his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, and as the protagonist's endless recountings of lovelorn regrets intensifies alongside the meticulous descriptions of the common objects he is collecting, the narrative too insinuates itself layer by layer, chapter by chapter, into the reader's consciousness.

Set mostly in the 1970s, The Museum of Innocence is the story of Kemal, a wealthy young man, happily dating the spirited Sibel, who belongs to his social circle. However one day he meets Füsan, a shopgirl from a poor family, and falls madly in love. They have a passionate affair that lasts forty-four days, but when Kemal officially announces his engagement to Sibel and celebrates with a large party to which all of Istanbul's society is invited (including a young writer named Orhan Pamuk who will re-emerge later for a more important role), Füsan ends their relationship and disappears from his life. When Kemal finally finds her again, she has married someone else. Undaunted, he spends the next eight years platonically insinuating himself into her daily life just to be near her. And during every visit he pockets some object that not only reminds him of her, but that will help to physically recreate the space she has inhabited - a stubbed out cigarette, a china dog that sits on the television, even something as mundane as a salt shaker that she once touched. This obsessional longing for Füsan completely takes over Kemal's life; he is physically ill, his business suffers and he loses the respect of his friends and family.

As Pamuk said during his interview at the recent International Festival of Authors in Toronto, his novel is about love, but it, "doesn't put it on a pedestal. It doesn't treat love as a sweet pop song but as a more human tragic drama. I was trying to humanely understand what happens when one is deeply and seriously in love."

The novel is also a portrait of everyday Istanbul life and its mostly wealthy population caught between tradition and wanting to embrace more Western and modern values. In particular, those caught between a double standard both cultural and gender-based, are the women of the novel - beautiful, intelligent and passionate, but living in a society very much focused on marriage and one that still frowns on pre-marital sex - for females. While the novel focuses mostly on Kemal's experiences, the frustration of all the women in his life is expressed, even his mother who is angry at her son, not for his indiscretions but how badly and publicly he has handled them. Füsan's rage at her situation also becomes increasingly apparent; despite her seemingly demure outer appearance it's clear that to be adored means nothing to her if it is accompanied by a narcissistic, selfish unawareness. Readers will certainly question the ambiguities surrounding the end of this multi-year romance.

While I did find the first half of the novel fairly repetitive (while acknowledging this structural necessity to re-enforce Kemal's all-consuming passion), the pacing does pick up in the second half. Particularly interesting are the passages describing Kemal's travels to real and quirky museums around the world in search of curatorial inspiration for his own museum dedicated to Füsan. It's a fascinating meditation on obsessive collectors and the power of objects to evoke memories, resurrect the dead, and console the grieving. This is a long and thoughtful novel - fans of Pamuk's other work will appreciate his unique style and enjoy this one too. I also think you can recommend this to readers who like Kazuo Ishiguro (I'm thinking of his novel The Unconsoled) or even A.S. Byatt. It's definitely for Proust fans as well.

At his IFOA reading, Pamuk was interviewed by well-known journalist Carol Off who actually got heckled at one point by the audience for asking the author political questions instead of just sticking to the novel. I was very surprised by the audience reaction as she certainly did not ignore the novel which she had clearly read. And her questions about Pamuk's politics were completely valid in his case given his recent experiences being charged under the Turkish penal code for uttering comments deemed insulting to the country (about the thousands of deaths of Armenians and Kurds that had taken place in Turkey). The charges were later dropped after an international outpouring of support. Pamuk interestingly doesn't consider himself a political writer. "The novelist's job is to understand others," he said. "Who is not like me, who is not living in my situation? Trying to see the world in another's eyes is deeply political engagement. It's also about compassion."

He also talked about the very real museum he is planning to open in Istanbul in 2010 to showcase the ordinary and cultural life of the city. He bought the building ten years ago and has been working with artists to produce images of artifacts to be displayed along with the several hundreds - mentioned in the novel - that he has already collected. You can read more about this project here and see some of the artifacts here.

Remembrance of Authors Past. . .

Have you always been meaning to read Proust and just need that extra push of encouragement? Hey, I'd give you a whacking thump on the back; spending a summer reading In Search of Lost Time remains one of the reading experiences of my life. Yes, it really is that good. Publishing Perspectives has just launched a new blog called The Cork-Lined Room in which you can read the novel and hook up with other readers online. They'll be starting the discussion on November 2nd. But first they offer ten good reasons for reading this mammoth, but oh-so-satisfying classic. If you need more guidance, you can also turn to this new guide: Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time: A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past by Patrick Alexander. Isn't the cover terrific?


Another great writer was Vladimir Nabokov and next month sees the somewhat controversial publication of his unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. He had originally instructed his wife to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that make up the "manuscript" of this book but they were locked away instead. Now his son has authorized the publication of this first draft. I'm excited to read this if only because the published format will be quite experimental and interesting - the book will consist of detachable facsimiles of the handwritten index cards (so not particularly practical for public libraries - sorry). Robert McCrum has a great article in The Guardian on the history of the manuscript and the controversy. It makes me want to stop everything and just read nothing but Nabokov for days on end. Check it out here.

Some highlights from the International Festival of Authors. . .

I've been spending the last couple of days taking in some exciting events at the International Festival of Authors and now want to take a month off to read a whole bunch of books. First on the pile has to be John Irving's new novel Last Night in Twisted River, which has been getting some stellar reviews. The Literary Saloon has a round-up of them here. Irving talked about how this novel has been brewing at the back of his mind for the last twenty years but he never can start the actual writing process until he knows the last sentence, and that only came to him about seven years ago. This sentence has already been widely quoted (it incorporates the book's title) and doesn't contain any spoilers so here it is:

He felt that the great adventure of his life was just beginning - as his father must have felt, in the throes and dire circumstances of his last night in Twisted River.

The first sentence is equally enticing:

The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long.

While I've certainly enjoyed some Irving novels like A Prayer For Owen Meany, or The Cider-House Rules more than others, he is one author that I will always make a point of reading. I admire the time he takes with each book, how he maps out his narrative meticulously paying close attention to details. During his IFOA interview, he spoke about wanting his books to be as plot and character driven as the novels by those writers he loved to read as a teenager - Dickens, Hardy, and Melville. That's fiine company to be in.

Another thrill at the festival was to meet British writer Adam Thorpe who was visiting Toronto for the first time. Several of his novels have been Dewey picks for me: The Standing Pool, Between Each Breath and The Rules of Perspective. I love the fact that he never even remotely tackles the same book twice and his writing is intelligent, edgy, and frequently creepy in a delicious, slow building way, (The Standing Pool scared the heck out of me, but I couldn't stop reading). He excels at making the smug reader feel uneasy both morally and emotionally. His latest novel Hodd sounds fascinating. It's a re-imagining of the Robin Hood story, but in his version there is no Maid Marian, no band of merry men and no stealing from the rich to give to the poor. This is Robin Hood or Robert Hodd, as if he were the equivalent of a medieval gangster and Thorpe went back to the origins of the legend, long before the movies and television created the character we think we know. A good book for dark November nights, I think.

The IFOA's country focus this year is Scotland and my favourite Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy absolutely rocked the house with her clever, witty and inspiring one hour stand-up show Words, which explored how she became a writer, the pitfalls of being one, the frequently ridiculous and surreal things that happen on book tours and while talking to the media, and how the crazy profession is nevertheless worth it because she gets to create whole worlds with words and words are power. She is just awesome. Do yourself a favour and read Everything You Need , which definitely has a permanent spot in my top ten favourite contemporary novels list. When I read it several years ago, this story about a group of writers living on a remote island completely overpowered me with its bleak setting and its emotionally fraught relationships. It's a novel that goes right to your guts.

Something completely different, but also tackling the writer's life is Nicholson Baker's new novel The Anthologist. Paul Chowder is a poet trying to write the introduction to a new anthology, and using all the negative things in his life as an excuse to procrastinate. Baker is not only a terrific writer but a superb and very funny reader as well - definitely don't miss the chance to hear him speak if he comes to your neighbourhood. I think this new novel will have much of the same humour as my favourite Baker work - U and I. It's definitely on my to-read list.

I also went and saw Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk being interviewed about his latest novel The Museum of Innocence, but I'll blog about that later - I've almost finished the book.

TD NATIONAL READING SUMMIT

On November 12th and 13th, Toronto will be hosting The TD National Reading Summit. For two days, people will come from all over the world and Canada, to help create a national reading program. This will be the first in a series of summits over three years. Many countries already have such policies in place...so why not Canada? I am really looking forward to attending AND participating. TPL is a sponsor and I expect to see many librarians there. If you want to get involved, check out the link and I hope to see you there!
I will blog about what takes place so stay tuned...

NYRB Challenge: A Ménage à trois of letters. . .

My next pick in my ongoing 50 book NYRB Classics Challenge was inspired by a recent conversation with a friend. We were discussing - ironically by electronic means - the demise of personal correspondence, concluding shamefully that it had been several years since either of us had actually written a long letter by hand. E-mail or instant messaging can be a wonderful, instantaneous, cheap mode of communication, but I have to wonder - are we missing out on something possibly more precious and fun, that is not only more permanent, but also intellectually challenging, forcing one as it does, to thoughtfully take the time to choose words and subject matter? Is letter writing truly a lost art form and one I'd like to re-engage with?

I wanted to find out so I spent two hours flexing my lazy hand muscles and I wrote my friend a letter. And then I went to my shelves and started reading NYRB Book #6 - Letters: Summer 1926, the correspondence between the poets Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva and Rainer Maria Rilke. The collection is edited by Yevgeny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak and Konstantin M. Azadovsky and translated from the Russian, German and French by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt and Jamey Gambrell. Susan Sontag provides the preface.

The collection covers four months in which the three poets wrote to and about each other. Rilke was battling leukemia in a sanatorium in Switzerland; he would die later that year. Pasternak was living in Moscow (where he couldn't receive letters with Swiss stamps - Rilke had to reroute them through France or Germany) and carrying on both an artistic and romantic correspondence with Tsvetayeva who was living in poverty in Paris. Reading this collection of very powerful and beautifully written letters, I was struck by several glaring contrasts to our modern styles of communication, no doubt influenced by the historical period and the personal temperaments of the poets. Considering that Rilke had never met either the adult Pasternak or Tsvetayeva, the emotional and familial outpouring of words is impressive from all three of them. Any author today would blush to get the type of adulation that gushes from this fanmail. This is especially true of Tsvetayeva's letters which were my favourite of the group. As noted in the introduction, she treated her letters as art, as if she were creating a new genre - "epistolary lyric poetry." Here she is on the subject of writing them:

A letter is like an otherworldly communication, less perfect than a dream but subject to the same rules. . . Neither the one nor the other can be produced on command; you neither write a letter nor dream a dream when you want to but when it wants to: the letter- to be written; the dream - to be dreamed.

Secondly, it was fascinating to note the extreme importance placed on the written word. These letters were not only read and re-read, but multiple copies were made, extracts written down in notebooks and forwarded on in other letters to friends and families. And indeed it is because of this meticulous preservation that this correspondence has been able to be reconstructed, as in some cases the original letter was lost. These letters were treasured and savoured. Pasternak kept a copy of a short letter from Rilke in an envelope marked "Most Precious" which he carried in his jacket pocket for the rest of his life. Would we ever do this with an e-mail, even one printed out? Would it have the same sentimental and emotional impact as a blue-tinged, crinkly piece of paper, the ink faded somewhat, but still showing signs of its writer's distinctive handwriting? Would we ever assign that much importance to any device that needed electrical charging?
And the correspondence even continued posthumously. Both Pasternak and Tsvetayeva wrote letters to Rilke after hearing of his death, as if this was the only medium they felt could best express their grief.

This collection contains an excellent and extensive introduction that provides all the biographical and artistic context one needs to successfully navigate through the correspondence and it will make you want to engage with the poetry as well. Rilke's poetry can be found easily and in many editions, for example here. Samples of Tsvetayeva and Pasternak's poetry, can be found in NYRB's edition of The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems, translated by Paul Schmidt. In particular, this collection contains Tsvetayeva's long poem "The Poem of the End" about a couple ending their affair as they walk across a city. It's haunting, beautiful and stylistically interesting, and when she sent it to Pasternak, it made an enormous impact on him (he mentions it numerous times in his letters, both to her and other correspondents). The collection also includes poems by acclaimed poets Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam and Alexander Blok.

The day after I finished the book, a handwritten letter arrived from my friend (Canada Post is considerably slower now than 1926 postal systems that crossed many borders). I shall treasure it. I think we both enjoyed the exercise enormously and I hope we'll continue to make the time to write.

The Importance of Buying Ernest

Ernest is a moose, a very big moose, and one who is VERY determined! You see, there is this book, a nice new orange picture book, and Ernest REALLY, REALLY wants to fit into it. But alas! No matter how Ernest struggles to shunt, shimmy, shuffle in one way or squidge, squodge, or squeeze in another, he is JUST TOO BIG! But fortunately for Ernest, he has a VERY resourceful friend- a little chipmunk. Together, with some sticky tape and odd bits of paper, they build an extension to the book so that Ernest fits in perfectly!

I LOVE this new picture book from Catherine Rayner, author of Harris Finds His Feet, which recently was awarded the 2009 Kate Greenaway Medal. It is perfect for reading aloud in front of a group of kids for storytime at your library (or to your thirty-something-year-old sister who is still a child at heart)! The simple text and descriptive words lend themselves to dramatic storytelling, and the lovely illustrations are nice and big so kids will be able to see them from across the room. The large gatefold ‘extension’ that the friends build to help Ernest fit into the book makes this book better suited for the storytime shelf than for general circulation, but nonetheless, this appealing story and characters are bound to become a favourite with children and storytellers alike.

Besides, how could you not love Ernest? Just look at that mug- Ernest is adorable!

A fearfully good follow-up. . .

Audrey Niffenegger is quickly establishing herself as a skillful narrator of unconventional love stories. Her Fearful Symmetry, her new follow-up novel to the best-selling The Time Traveler's Wife is just as quirky (albeit without any naked librarians), and ethereal, and I enjoyed it even more than the first book.
Julia and Valentina are two American mirror twins who have come to London after their recently deceased aunt Elspeth bequeaths them her flat. The only conditions - they must live in the flat for a year and their parents (particularly Elspeth's twin sister) are not allowed to set foot in it during that time.
The twins, suddenly independent, tentatively start exploring the city and the neighbourhood around their building, which is adjacent to Highgate cemetery (home to the graves of George Eliot and Karl Marx among others - there are a few ghostly photographs scattered throughout the book). Formerly inseparable, they also venture into new experiences of their own, especially when they become involved in the lives of their lonely neighbours: Robert, Elspeth's grieving lover who works as a guide in the cemetery, and Martin, a crossword puzzle creator with an obsessive-compulsive disorder, whose wife has just left him. Complicating all of their lives is the ghost of Elspeth, who just doesn't want to leave her former flat, and mischievously observes the living with ulterior motives of her own.
Her Fearful Symmetry is a lot of fun to read veering as it does from the suddenly spooky and supernatural, to passages full of sparkling, spectral wit. Think Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit meets Hitchcock's Vertigo with a little bit of Fingersmith thrown in for good measure. If you are a Sarah Waters fan, you will particularly enjoy this. It's a ghost story, a love story (equal parts romantic and suffocating) and the perfect adult read for Hallowe'en or a cozy evening by the fire as the dark autumn night howls outside the windows.

In Search of Lost Personalities. . .

So here's something fun for the lunch break. Just published is Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire: 101 Luminaries Ponder Love, Death, Happiness and the Meaning of Life - a collection of favourite celebrity results from the Proust questionaire that's at the back of the magazine. Everyone from Salman Rushdie to Aretha Franklin to Catherine Deneuve is included. You can read more about the origins of the questionnaire here. Or, you can take it yourself online here and find out which celebrity your answers had the most in common with. For me - it turned out to be Jane Goodall. And I didn't mention chimps once, honestly!
Certainly a more thoughtful quiz than the ones that usually turn up in Cosmo.

Fall 2009 Dewey picks. . .

If you're looking for something to read this weekend, or want to get a head start on some holds at your library - I've now posted some of the Dewey Divas' fall picks. You can always access them on the right hand side of this blog, and as the reps update their websites, I'll link to those pages. For now, you can see fall picks from Lahring, Saffron, Susan and yours truly. Have a great Thanksgiving weekend. Stuff yourself silly with books!

Herta Müller wins Nobel Prize. . .

Another writer to add to my growing pile of international writers to read. Librarians will be familiar with her as she won the 1998 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for The Land of Green Plums, available in English translation from Northwestern University Press as is Traveling on One Leg.

The best information on this author and her books is to be found at the Literary Saloon - which by watching the betting odds and doing some good sleuthing, actually predicted the winner yesterday. See also this post.

NYRB Challenge: Cesare Pavese. . .

Over to Italy now. My next author choice came about because I've been slowly working my way through the films of the great Italian director Michangelo Antonioni. I was watching a DVD of 1955's Le Amiche (The Girlfriends) and the credits announced it was based on a novel by Cesare Pavese. I hit the pause button and immediately went to my shelves as I knew NYRB published him. Sure enough, the short novel that was the inspiration for the film is part of The Selected Works of Cesare Pavese, under the title Among Women Only. I love the cover of this collection - it could almost have been a still from the movie. Both versions of the story are great. It follows a woman who comes to Turin from Rome to oversee the setting up of a new fashion boutique shop and gets caught up in the lives of a group of rich but bored and shallow women. In the novel, the main character has more bite and worldly cynicism than her movie counterpart, but the ending of the film is terrific and all Antonioni. But unfortunately this NYRB edition does not have Canadian rights (although you can read Among Women Only in other editions). So it didn't count for this challenge.

So my NYRB Challenge Book #5 is another Pavese work that is available in Canada - his novel The Moon and the Bonfires, translated by R.W. Flint. It was published in 1950, just before the author committed suicide. The narrator, known only by his nickname "Eel", has returned to the small Italian town he grew up in. He has been away in America for many years - including those of the Second World War - making his fortune and trying to put his past behind him. (Incidentally, Pavese worked as a translator on many American classics by Melville, Gertrude Stein and Faulkner). Eel grew up in poverty, never knowing his parents and reliant on a family who takes him in for the few lire that the orphanage pays each month. He feels the stigma of his illegitimacy all his life. Later he goes to work on the Mora estate, a nearby vineyard, where he spies on the three daughters of his master as, desperate to leave their farm, they chase the attentions of any available bachelor - with tragic results (unhappiness and hopelessness seem positively glued to Pavese's female characters despite their defiant posturing). While wandering the familiar landscape of his past, and reconnecting with an old friend, Eel becomes interested in the family now eeking out a living on the poor parcel of land where he grew up, and also in finding out how the youngest Mora daughter died during the war.

This is a heartbreaking novel very much about wanting the unattainable yet never truly being able to escape from your past. Eel may have made money in America, but he's restlessly wandered that country for years, never content. The repetitive human cycles of inevitable despair mirror, and are very much embued with, the changing seasons - the promise of sown crops and the disappointment when harvests are poor. The title refers to the folk superstitions practised in hopes of cultivating the land, now sneeringly dismissed by the older, wealthy Eel. His wise friend quietly corrects him:

[he] told me that superstition is only what does harm, and if someone should use the moon and the bonfires to rob the peasants and keep them in the dark, then that man would be an ignoramus and ought to be shot in the piazza. But before I spoke I should become a peasant again. An old man like Valino might know nothing else, but he did know the land.

One small quibble that I have with the NYRB edition is the introduction by Mark Rudman which has plenty of interesting background information on the author but contains far too many plot spoilers. This novel is filled with a lot of shocking and emotional revelations. If you want to be surprised, skip the introduction until after you've finished the book. It really should have been an afterword.

Hilary Mantel wins the Booker. . .

. . . and once again, I fail to predict the winner and my own personal favourite doesn't win. Darn. Still - it was a great shortlist this year and I'm looking forward to reading Wolf Hall. The reviews, both from the critics and the librarians I know who have read it, have been stellar.

The BIG news of the day. . .

Yes, I know the Giller shortlist was announced this morning. If you haven't yet heard, you can read the names of the finalists here.

And the Booker Prize will be annouced in a few hours and I fully expect A.S. Byatt or J.M. Coetzee to walk away with the prize.

And we can look forward to the Nobel Prize being announced on Thursday.

BUT today I learned that there's a new Jonathan Coe novel coming out in 2010!!!! And that my friends, trumps them all! Thanks to the Literary Saloon for the news. The title is The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim and that's all I know for now.

I'm doing my happy dance. For those who wonder what all the fuss is about, just read him okay? The Rain Before it Falls, The Rotters' Club, The Closed Circle, The House of Sleep or The Winshaw Legacy.

Comfort audio. . .

Have you had a hard day? Or has it been cold and miserable out? Relax. Have a bubble bath and a glass of wine, then get into your jammies, put one of these CDs on and revert back to those idyllic childhood days when the most stressful decision in life was choosing which book your parents would read to you that night. Listening Library has just released these charming unabridged audios of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House on Pooh Corner with Stephen Fry as Pooh and Judi Dench as both the narrator and Kanga. And if you are a fan of As Time Goes By, you'll also enjoy Geoffrey Palmer as Eeyore. Jane Horrocks is Piglet.

Not recommended for children only.

"Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art. . . "

Okay everyone, get ready to sigh and swoon and lament an age when poets not only wrote odes to their beloved, but some of the most beautiful love letters as well. Twitter just doesn't cut it, does it? On the weekend, I saw Jane Campion's new film Bright Star, based on the tragically short romance of John Keats and Fanny Brawne, and if this movie doesn't have you taking down your dusty anthologies of British poetry from university days, and reading some Keats, (and yes, all his greatest hits are in the movie), I don't know what will. Like these lines from his poem "To Fanny":

Yourself - your soul - in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom or I die. . .

Heady stuff, eh? Do try and get an edition that includes some of the love letters as well, which are some of the most passionate ever written. Our movie-tie edition will include the complete poems and a good selection of letters, and also has an introduction by Campion. It will be available in November (in plenty of time to get into some stockings). The movie is very well done, certainly very beautiful to look at, and yes, quite romantic. One of my friends has been told in no uncertain terms by her husband, that she is not allowed to see the movie without him by her side. Critics have been effusive in their praise of Abbie Cornish who plays Fanny but Ben Whishaw as Keats, more than holds his own (you may remember him as Sebastian in the recent movie adaption of Brideshead Revisited). And most importantly, he has a lovely poetry-reading voice.

Keats isn't the only dead poet making the literary rounds at the moment. I've just started Adam Foulds' new novel The Quickening Maze which is on the shortlist for this year's Booker Prize (we found out late that we have Canadian rights to this, but the hardcover edition should be in stores and libraries now, and Vintage Canada has bought paperback rights and is bringing it out quickly in early November). Set about fifteen years after Keats' death, The Quickening Maze tells the story of nature poet John Clare, during the years he spent at High Beach Asylum. Located in the Essex countryside, it's not a prison; Clare is allowed to work each day in the gardens and for good behaviour, he can take walks in the nearby forests. Alfred Tennyson is also a character in the novel; he moves to a nearby house to be close to his brother who is also getting treatment at the asylum. I'm only about sixty pages in but I'm luxuriating in the pacing and lovely descriptions of nature; Foulds is himself an award-winning poet. And it's reminding me of yet another recent novel about a British poet - Robert Edric's In Zodiac Light - which traces the last days of First World War poet and musician Ivor Gurney, who was also confined to a mental institution.

Bright stars indeed, but quick to burn out.

Sunburst awards announced. . .

The 2009 Sunburst awards for Canadian Literature of the fantastic have been announced. Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle takes the prize, with Cory Doctorow's Little Brother winning for best YA novel.

NYRB Challenge Book #4 - The Pure and the Impure. . .

I picked up Colette's The Pure and The Impure, translated by Herma Briffault, simply because I'd seen a number of French films at the Toronto Film Festival, many of them about love and relationships (and really, does anyone tackle l'amour better than the French?) and was in the mood for more. This is the first book by Colette that I've read and I think I might have appreciated it more had I been familiar with some of her novels.

According to her biographer Judith Thurman, who writes the introduction, Colette began writing this "investigation into the nature and laws of the erotic life" in 1930, working on it for several years. It was published in 1941 when Colette was sixty-eight. The narrative is a series of sketches of men and women, gay and straight, some of whom have been Colette's own lovers. She acts as a confessional conduit for the tormented and exasperated - lovers solicit her advice and reveal their secrets, jealousies and obsessions to her. There is a lot of world-weariness, narcissim and unhappiness in these pages leading to opium dens, alcholism, anorexia and suicide. One of the only happy portraits is that of the two "Ladies of Llangollen" who ran away from their disapproving families in 1778 to set up house in the Welsh countryside, where they lived in apparent idyllic happiness for fifty years - although as Colette reminds us, we only have the diary entries of one of the couple as proof.

There are veiled references to the French literati of the early 20th century and if I knew more about that period, I would doubtless get more out of this book; I found many of the early profiles left me cold because they were too short and detached to get a real sense of their subjects. But I am glad that I kept reading because the book gets very interesting in the second half when Colette injects more of her own personal observations into the narrative as she muses on the differences between lesbian, gay and heterosexual relationships and what happens when they foolishly mix. And she's very interesting on the societal malaise that hit women in post First World-War Paris:

Despair born of frustration drove women, after the war, to imitate the looks and manners of androgynous young men. They had reckoned on their men being delivered back to them full of frenzied desire. Then, becoming aware that their own apotheosis was not very dazzling, they began wildly to imitate the outward looks of the male tribe that was causing them such heartache. They cropped their hair, squandered a fortune at the shirtmaker's, and drank to excess. And they gained no ground, for they were not disinterested enough.

She also has a very sensual, visceral way with language. Here she is on jealousy:

. . . it is a kind of gymnast's purgatory, where the senses are trained, one by one, and it has the gloom of all training centers. . . The sense of hearing becomes refined, one acquires visual virtuosity, a rapid and hushed step, a sense of smell that can capture the particles deposited in the atmosphere by a head of hair, a scented powder, the passage of a brazenly happy person . . . A body absolutely on the alert becomes weightless, moves with somnambulistic ease, rarely collapses and falls.

In the end, my favourite relationship in the book is not a romantic liaison at all, but the ongoing comic bond between Colette and Madame X - rivals for the attentions of the same lover. The intensity of their mutual antagonism keeps them both going. When Colette stops cursing Madame X for a couple of months because she is absorbed in her writing, a series of mishaps occur that she blames on this inattention; she falls into a ditch, loses a manuscript, three of her kittens die mysteriously. The two eventually become friends when the object of their jealousy has long left the picture and they can look back and laugh about it. I can see why this was considered a daring book of its times and while it's not my favourite NYRB Classic, I'm glad I read it. I will certainly seek out some of Colette's novels for future reading.

Kingston Rocks!. . .

As book reps and readers, we're used to attending a lot of literary festivals - but rarely have we been part of the line-up. A big thank-you to all the organizers of the Kingston Writer's Festival which hosted a Book Lovers lunch last Friday featuring the Dewey Divas. Ann and I got to talk about some of our favourite picks in front of a lovely, engaged crowd - almost all of whom belong to a book club. (And what a great idea to have wine on the table - we sound so much better after a couple of sips!). It was a terrifically run festival - interesting sessions, wonderfully marketed and organized and they made us feel so welcome. And a special thanks to the Kingston librarians who suggested us in the first place - we had so much fun doing this.

Generation A or why we need to keep on reading. . .

One of the books that I was really disappointed not to see on the Giller longlist announced earlier this week, was Douglas Coupland's Generation A, which so far is my favourite Canadian novel of 2009. He just keeps getting better and better. His last few books have all been Dewey picks due to their quirky subject matter, humour, and just great storytelling. He is always ORIGINAL and when you read as much as I do for work, that's something to be truly grateful for. I don't know how he does it, but he always has his finger on the pulse of society's neuroses, spinning a tale around those anxieties that is not only enormously entertaining, but really makes one think. In this case, one trembles a bit too.

Generation A is set in the near future when nearly all the bees have disappeared; the site of the last known active beehive has now become a UNESCO World Heritage site. Flowers have vanished and crops are failing. One day five complete strangers (the narrators of the novel) are stung in different places around the world - New Zealand, Paris, a cornfield in Iowa, Sri Lanka and North Bay - and are immediately taken into custody by security forces, isolated, and subjected to a barrage of medical tests as scientists try to figure out why they attracted the bees. Each of the five eventually finds out about the others and starts to make contact. And when they finally meet. . .

I can't write any more without spoiling the story and anyways, this has one of those plots that is impossible to summarize satisfactorily. Suffice it to say that if society read a little more, and used their blackberries a little less, we'd all be better off. This novel was just so much fun to read - it' s spot on about our obsessions with the cult of celebrity, the online world, video games, processed food, sex and shopping, and prescription drugs guarenteed to make us happy. How selfish and narcissistic and mundane our modern world has become; we desperately need to keep those bees buzzing! Here's a brief description of that malaise:

I hate the way our bodies move through the world, clip-clop, like beef marionettes. I hate how the world has turned into one massive hamburger-making machine, how the world is only about people now - everything else on the planet must bow to our will because there's no longer any other option. Fundamentalists rejoiced when the bees died out; to them it was proof that the planet exists entirely for and was entirely about people. How could such thinking not make you want to go out and vomit into the street?

That quote could almost have come out of Margaret Atwood's new dystopian novel The Year of the Flood, and indeed, it would be fun to read the two books back to back or compare them in a bookclub. They have completely different narrative styles and stories, but both authors employ their sharp satirical bite to chew on the damage we are inflicting on our world. Please recommend both books to teens as well - they are the generation that needs to pay attention.

And finally if you want to know whether Douglas Coupland thinks this

is the most attractive, evil or loneliest letter of the alphabet, or need full instructions on how to make the Earth Sandwich described in Generation A, or are just curious about his answers to a number of other challenging questions, check out this YouTube video.

Carfree and Carefree. . .

Today is World Carfree Day and seems an appropriate moment to reflect on my one year anniversary of urban living and working without a car.

It was little more than a year ago that I was rear-ended at an intersection while driving home (fortunately, no one was hurt) and it jolted me in more ways than one. The whole back of the car was smashed and took several weeks for repairs. Desperately needing to get to Niagara-on-the-Lake because I had Shaw Festival tickets, I tried every car rental place and found it impossible to find anything available at the last minute on a summer weekend. So I turned to Zipcar.com and lo and behold there were numerous cars in my neighbourhood that were free. The light bulb went on, I made it to the theatre, and shortly thereafter gave up my car in favour of a Metropass and a Zipcar membership and I've never been happier.

Some of my colleagues thought I was nuts. My commuting time to the office has nearly doubled (it's now an hour and 15-20 minutes on average each way) and I frequently have to carry heavy piles of manuscripts, books and catalogues home in a backpack as opposed to the trunk of a car.
But I absolutely love it and, apart from the environmental advantages, here's why:

1. I never have to worry about trying to find a parking spot on the street again, especially in winter when most of the spaces disappear under ploughed piles of snow.
2. I never have to worry about the car being buried by said snowploughs and having to dig it out and chip the ice off the doors. I can't tell you how much stress this used to cause me.
3. I have added 2.5-3 hours of time to myself during the commute. I can sleep, read, catch up on podcasts, listen to music, daydream or people watch on the bus; someone else is doing the driving. Plus I like the 15 minute walk to the bus stop. I can take a variety of routes, some through a park and can even grab a latte on the way.
4. I've lost 8 pounds, kept it off and dropped one dress size. I feel healthier and more energetic than ever.
5. With my Metropass, I've been exploring more neighbourhoods in my city.
6. If I still had the car, I would probably never have bought my foldable bike; the joys of cycling again have been a big part of my summer. It's also been fun rediscovering the train (in some cases even cheaper than zipping a car) but then Brief Encounter has always been one of my favourite movies.
7. It's fun to carpool with the Deweys - all of whom have been generous and supportive.
8. With Zipcar, you can drive a variety of different cars like the Mini Cooper above. That was an experience. It was 6am and dark when I first got into one - took me 20 minutes to figure out the ignition. Car manuals are hopeless. But once I got it going, it was a cute little thing with a nice sunroof.

Note that I haven't given up driving entirely - as a book rep for a large publishing company (lots of catalogues), I still need a car for many of my appointments and Dewey gigs. Fortunately there are so many Zipcars in my neighbourhood that I've never been unable to book one (even at the last minute, like this morning when I thought I'd made a reservation, and all my usual cars were booked and my cell phone battery died, and after finding a phone that worked, the closest car that was free was two subway stops away in a garage under a building, and I was running late, and then I couldn't figure out how the parking pass worked to lift the garage barrier, and I was on a steep ramp with an angry line-up behind me and sliding backwards the moment I took my foot off the brake. . .ah, just another frantic day in the life of a rep. . . )

Obviously, this won't work for everyone. If you live in the suburbs where there aren't any zipcars, or your workplace isn't accessible by transit then this isn't a viable option. But corny as it may sound, going carless is similar to giving up cable TV, which I also did around the same time. I feel like I've decluttered and cleansed my life and the fact that both rejections have freed up so much more reading time is just an added bonus.

The Boys are Back. . .

So here are some tips for surviving a film festival. Always carry a good book (lots of reading time in the line-ups), manage the fluid intakes wisely because there isn't always time to head to the washroom, and always, always, make conversation with the strangers standing in line around you, because you never know when you'll meet someone who knows someone who knows someone else who can get you within ten feet of this, beautiful, beautiful man!

Yes, I know - and all I could come up with was this blurry photo. Well, wouldn't your hands shake too?

Oh, and the movie? Not bad either. The Boys Are Back is directed by Scott Hicks (Shine, Snow Falling on Cedars) and is based on the book by Simon Carr. Clive Owen plays Joe, a top sports writer, whose wife suddenly dies of cancer leaving him grief-stricken and suddenly the only parent to their six year old son. Then his older son from a previous marriage - also dealing with parental issues - arrives for a visit. I normally roll my eyes at stories of men suddenly discovering that taking care of children is difficult, time-absorbing and involves a change in lifestyle; I've just known too many who have chosen to walk away from their responsibilities instead. But the script is quite good and not overly sentimental and Joe makes plenty of serious mistakes over and over again until it all finally sinks in. The acting is great, as are the shots of Australia. It'll hit all the right buttons, but thankfully it's not as riddled with cliche as movies in this genre tend to be. And it's nice to see Owen in a different type of role. Mind you, it's just nice to see him.

NYRB Challenge: In which I go to the dogs (and the movies too!). . .

Let me start by saying that I've never been a dog owner. I classify dogs in the same category as cars and kids; I can understand the appeal, but for me - too much work and worry. This hasn't stopped me though from thoroughly enjoying these two short canine tales, both of which were published in 1956 but couldn't be more different in style and content.

My NYRB Challenge Book #2 is the very funny memoir My Dog Tulip by British writer J.R. Ackerley, which I picked up both because I had a ticket to the new animated film screening at TIFF, and I couldn't help laughing at the E.M. Forster quote on the back: "It is the biography of the New Dog - a creature comparable to the New Woman that disturbed our grandparents."

Tulip is a young Alsatian that Ackerley acquires when he is in his fifties and she completely changes his life, despite the fact that she is badly behaved, barks at everyone, and has very unpredictable bowel movements (the chapter simply titled "Liquids and Solids" is Ackerley's comic account of dealing with the latter in this era before "poop and scoop" laws). However the two absolutely adore each other and the reader can't help but smile at Ackerley's determination to make Tulip happy by ensuring that she experiences all that a female dog should - namely sex and pregnancy. Two thirds of the book follows his many frustrating attempts to find Tulip a proper mate; who knew how complicated canine sex was? But the deed is finally done and there is a very touching scene when Ackerley watches throughout the night as Tulip gives birth to her puppies (though you'll be shocked by what happens next). Even if you are completely indifferent to dogs, the strength of this memoir is definitely the writing which will charm and surprise with its candor whether Ackerley is describing the inexhaustible and unsuccessful wooing on the part of Tulip's suitors - many of them too small to do anything about it - to the heartfelt gratitude he feels when they both relieve themselves in the park and Tulip makes a point of sprinkling her own urine on his: "I feel that if ever there were differences between us, they are washed out now," he writes. "I feel a proper dog." (Must be a guy thing). He is also very good at describing dog owners to comic effect. My favourite quote shows the strong and beautiful bond between the two: "Tulip never let me down. She is nothing if not consistent. She knows where to draw the line, and it is always in the same place, a circle around us both."

I saw the animated film of My Dog Tulip last night. It's directed by Paul Fierlinger who is also the main animator along with his wife Sandra Fierlinger. He draws the images and she paints them. He was at the screening and in the Q & A that followed he explained how the images were created. The entire movie was hand-drawn but using a computer software program that allows the process to be paperless. He draws the frames on a computer slate and later the colours are painted in. It still took two and a half years to complete. I enjoyed the film; the style of animation (which is far more sophisticated than it initially looks - lots of interesting things happening the in the background) works well with the basic simplicity of the story, and Fierlinger has stayed very close to the book (95% of the narration is taken directly from it). Christopher Plummer is a marvellous choice for the voice of the crusty and cynical Ackerley. There are many sexual references and jokes, but these are rendered in an non-explicit, almost cartoonish style - while not a children's film specifically, I don't think it will unduly disturb any kid 12 and up. You can see clips and the trailer at the movie's website located here.

Niki: The Story of a Dog by Tibor Déry, translated by George Szirtes, is a very different breed of dog story and #3 in my NYRB Challenge, picked up because I was fascinated that it was published in the same year as the Ackerley and seemed an ideal pairing. This is a novel set in Hungary after the Second World War, amidst the fears and violence of ongoing political unrest. Niki is a scrappy little terrier who is adopted by the Ancsas, a couple who have lost their son in the war. When the husband gets a new job in Budapest, they move from the country to a tiny flat and things start to fall apart. Niki is not an urban dog and has a hard time adjusting. Mr. Ansca gets shifted to a number of jobs for which he is highly overqualified and then one day he doesn't come home and no one knows why. His wife is left to fend for herself and with little money, she has to question whether or not to keep the dog which is now viewed by a suspicious and hungry society as a luxury item. But Niki is the only thing she has left, and so she strives to provide as much love and happiness as she can for the inconsolable dog who is missing her master. This sad novel explores the difficulties of true communication between dogs and humans. This incomprehensibility is played for laughs in My Dog Tulip, but here, Niki stands in for the Hungarian citizens - they too can't understand why people suddenly disappear with no explanation given or how long this state of suspension will last. It takes a physical and mental toll:

The bitch neither cried, nor argued, nor protested, nor demanded explanations; and it was impossible to convince her. She simply resigned herself to her fate in silence. This silence, which resembled the ultimate silence of a prisoner broken in body and soul, was, for Mrs. Ancsa, like a violent protest at the nature of existence itself.

I was oddly touched by both books which of course were as much about the owners of Tulip and Niki, and their own quests to fight loneliness and connect emotionally with the world. Dog lovers will find their own personal touchstones within these pages, but any rendition of a relationship has a universal appeal and relevance to all humans - even those not attached to a leash.

2009 CWA Dagger Shortlists

'Tis the season for award announcements it would seem! On September 7th, the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) announced the shortlists for their 2009 Awards. The CWA Dagger Awards are the longest established literary awards in the UK and are internationally recognised as a mark of excellence and achievement. I'm a voracious mystery reader and I always find that these shortlists make a great a shopping list to take along to the bookstore when I'm on the lookout for a new author. It's particularly nice to see a Canadian on the list for the New Blood Dagger- Robert Rotenberg (Old City Hall). NB- I've noted the Canadian publishers below if they differ from the UK publisher.

The shortlist for this year’s CWA Gold Dagger, for the top crime novel of the year are as follows:

• Kate Atkinson: When Will There Be Good News? (Anchor Canada)
• Mark Billingham: In the Dark (McArthur & Company)
• Lawrence Block: Hit and Run (Harper Collins)
• William Brodrick: A Whispered Name (Little, Brown)
• MR Hall: The Coroner (Pan Macmillan)
• Gene Kerrigan: Dark Times In The City (Harvill Secker)

I'm so happy to see The Coroner by M.R. Hall on the list! This was one of my Dewey Diva picks from the Spring list (a must read if you are a Lynda LaPlante fan). The sequel The Disappeared is coming on our Winter 2010 list.

The shortlist for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for first books by previously unpublished writers is:

• David Fuller Sweetsmoke (Hyperion)
• James Green Bad Catholics (Luath Press)
• Rod Madocks No Way To Say Goodbye (Five Leaves)
• Robert Rotenberg Old City Hall (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster)
• Johan Theorin Echoes from The Dead (Doubleday UK)
• Dan Waddell The Blood Detective (Penguin)

The shortlisted titles for this year’s CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger (thriller novel) are:

• Michael Connelly: The Brass Verdict (Little Brown)
• Gillian Flynn: Dark Places (Shaye Areheart Books)
• John Hart: The Last Child (St. Martin's Press)
• Charlie Newton: Calumet City (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster)
• Daniel Silva: Moscow Rules (Signet)
• Olen Steinhauer: The Tourist (St. Martin's Press)* One of my picks from Winter 2009, hurrah!
• Andrew Williams: The Interrogator (John Murray)

The awards above will presented on Wednesday, 21st October, 2009. Already presented (in July) were the following awards:

• 2009 Debut Dagger for best unpublished work (Catherine O’Keefe, The Pathologist)
• 2009 International Dagger for best mystery in translation (won for the THIRD time in four years by a favourite of Maylin's- Fred Vargas and translator Sîan Reynolds for The Chalk Circle Man)
• 2009 CWA Dagger in the Library to "the author of crime fiction whose work is currently giving the greatest enjoyment to library users"- awarded to Colin Cotterill Quercus

I Just Discovered Ian Rankin

About a year after the final installment of of the wildly successful Inspector Rebus series, I have just discovered Ian Rankin. I really do quite enjoy mysteries, so I am quite shame faced that I have come to him so late. It has been an absolute pleasure getting these books in series order from my library. Sometimes reading him I find I need a Scottish dictionary even though I am well versed with the Scots way of talking.

What a treat to end the summer reading him...my only question is what next?

http://www.ianrankin.net/books.asp

What's wrong with this Picture?. . .

Well Colin Firth was a no-show. No reason was given, but if I were to hazard a guess, I'd think perhaps it's because he actually saw his movie. Oh dear, oh dear. Let me just put it this way. If you haven't read the book and you like horror movies, you might enjoy this. If you have read and loved the book and aren't too keen on blood and maggots, then you might want to give Dorian Gray a pass and perhaps rent director Oliver Parker's other Wilde movies - The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, both of which are fine adaptations.

The highlight of the night occured while I was in the long line-up snaking along the side of Roy Thompson Hall. We caught a fleeting glimpse of George Clooney coming out the back entrance after his movie screening.

The rest of this weekend is devoted to independent films from Britain, Germany, Denmark, New Zealand and France, which is fine with me. I think I've had enough of Hollywood for the moment.

Toronto Film Frenzy. . .

The city is all abuzz; The Toronto International Film Festival started yesterday and people are having so much fun rushing around the city from film to film. Never mind the celebrity watching, just people watching is fascinating. TIFF always means long lineups but they are filled with real film buffs; half the fun is having spirited conversations with the people around you. I'm going to be cramming 17 films into eight days - it began wonderfully last night with Pedro Almodovar's new film Broken Embraces. Absolutely terrific - make sure you catch this when it opens in theatres. It's the story of a blind filmmaker named Harry Caine, his agent, her son, and Caine's lover played by the stunningly beautiful Penelope Cruz who has never looked (or acted) better. Some of the stunning images had me gasping at their beauty. As it's the story of a filmmaker there are lots of references to other directors - there's a bit of a Hitchcock feel to some scenes, and definitely more than a couple of nods to Louis Malle's films, in particular Elevator to the Gallows and Damage.

Unfortunately due to scheduling and availability of tickets, I'm not seeing any Canadian films. But I will be picking up a copy of the just published Toronto On Film by Geoff Pevere et al. It'll be freshing to read about movies where Toronto plays Toronto and not just as a stand-in for an American city. The University of Toronto Press also has a great new Canadian Cinema Series where each volume focuses on a specific film. Earlier in the year I was at the launch of Denys Arcand's Le Déclin de l'empire américain and Les Invasions barbares by André Loiselle that was accompanied by a screening of the first film, which I hadn't seen in ages. I've subsequently bought it and its sequel on DVD and I never get tired of watching this group of funny, selfish, egotistical and yet loving group of friends as they navigate the emotional and intellectual challenges of life. Makes a great double bill for the weekend - and no line-ups!

Tonight - Colin Firth and Dorian Gray.

NYRB Challenge Book #1 - Indian Summer

Despite the political incorrectness of the title, it was the word "summer" that jumped out at me from the shelves and made Indian Summer by American author William Dean Howells my first of fifty NYRB books I'm trying to read in a year. Mind you the book was first published in 1886 and it doesn't take place in a North American autumn at all, but during one winter and spring in Florence, Italy. As Wendy Lesser notes in her introduction, the title, "a veiled reference to the weather's deceptiveness" is the same concept behind the idea of Indian giving, "the sense of promise offered and then snatched away" and these are some of the themes that embed themselves into Howells' novel.
Theodore Colville has returned to Florence at the age of 41, nearly twenty years after he was rejected by the young woman he fell in love with. Her friend at the time, Mrs. Lina Bowen, is now a widow living in the city with a young woman named Imogene in her care. Through a series of rash impulses and misunderstandings caused by an adherence to society's moral codes, Theodore finds himself engaged to Imogene in what is perhaps one last attempt to regain - and redeem - his lost youth. But that is only the beginning of his problems in this restrained comedy of manners. The American abroad is a common motif also depicted by Howells' contemporaries, Henry James and Edith Wharton and you can certainly recommend this novel to fans of those two luminaries. But Howells has a lighter narrative touch and is much funnier (Colville's main charm is his sense of irony and enough self-deprecation to make one think he should have been born English). Howells' Americans may adapt to the Italian city more easily than E.M. Forster's Brits in A Room With a View but they share the same sensibilities in creating a community that rarely is inclusive of Italians themselves. Readers of a certain age will also take umbrage (or chuckle ) at the many references to people in their forties being "old". Fortunately there is the wise retired Rev. Waters, a man in his seventies, who offers this apt summation (not only of the age, but to the novel as a whole):

At forty, one has still a great part of youth before him - perhaps the richest and sweetest part. By that time the turmoil of ideas and sensations is over; we see clearly and feel consciously. . . We have enlarged our perspective sufficiently to perceive things in their true proportion and relation. . .Then we have time enough behind us to supply us with the materials of reverie and reminiscence; the terrible solitude of inexperience is broken; we have learned to smile at many things besides the fear of death. We ought also to have learned pity and patience. . . Yes, it is a beautiful age.

If you agree with any aspect of this passage, then this is a novel whose time has come for you.

Booker Prize shortlist announced. . .

Hooray, my favourite (A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book) is still in running. Joining her on the Man Booker Prize shortlist are:

J. M Coetzee - Summertime. (Really happy to see this on the list as well. It's his best novel since Disgrace.

Adam Foulds - The Quickening Maze

Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall

Simon Mawer - The Glass House (on my to-be-read list for sure)

Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger

The winner will be announced October 6th.

My School Project: The 50 Book NYRB Reading Challenge. . .

Labour Day marks the end of summer for most people, but for me it's a wistful reminder that my school days are over and done with; it's hard to suppress that itch I still get to go school supply shopping. Part of the fun of each new term was making a pile of the required texts in delicious contemplation of hopefully discovering new writers, different eras, and challenging ideas. And as I was dusting my crowded bookshelves this weekend, I realized I have more than enough unread treasures in my own personal library to continue this tradition. I usually wait until January to assign myself some reading challenges, but since so much of my life has been oriented around the school year (I still use a September - to- September daytimer), I'm in the perfect mindset now to enroll in a new venture. And I know exactly what "course" I want to take.

Long before Random House started distributing New York Review of Books Classics (which I now proudly get to represent), I'd been an avid collector. I loved the eclectic selection of titles and authors, the thoughtful introductions, the handsome covers, their trade paperback size - so easy to pop into a purse - and price. They used to be hard to find in Canada and every time I went to the States for a holiday or Book Expo, I'd stop at a bookstore and buy five, ten, or twenty to bring home. I now own 184 but as is the curse of many a bibliophile with too many literary passions, I've only gotten around to reading 22. And yet I can honestly say that I've consistently enjoyed every single NYRB book that I've ever read. Some have been more to my taste than others, but each has offered something unexpected and the line has introduced me to many new authors I would never have otherwise read - especially classic works by international authors in translation, a genre they excel in.

Well, I'm not getting any younger and NYRB continues to publish 15-20 new titles every year. It's time to get serious and start making inroads into their rich list. And so I'm going to try my darnest to read and blog about 50 of their titles from Labour Day Weekend 2009 to Labour Day Weekend 2010. That's roughly one a week, with a couple of grace weeks for some of the longer books. I have no set order; whatever takes my whimsy that week will suffice, although I will leave some of the shorter books for times that I'm particularly busy. And I wouldn't look for Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1424 pages) to pop up anytime soon. I'm also going to try not to read the same writer back to back or consecutive writers from the same country. And I'll make a conscious effort to explore the many genres that NYRB publishes - not just great fiction, but memoirs, letters, biography, history, travel, philosophy and poetry too. Since most of the readers of this blog are Canadian, I'm going to stick to those books that have Canadian rights, although many that don't are available in Canada from other publishers.

Do check out their incredible selection of books at their U.S. website here. I'll just end this post by listing my ten favourite NYRB Classics among those I've already read. And I'd love to hear from any fans with recommendations of what to read next.

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. A revelation. Completely original. Completely unforgettable.
Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang. Very moving stories about life and love in mid-20th century China.
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy (available in Canada from Virago). Every librarian needs to read this very funny novel.
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (available in Canada from Sort of Books). Such beautiful, delicate, uplifting writing about nature, time, death and human relationships.
Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge. A powerful novel about trying - and failing - to escape the horrors of the twentieth century.
Mary Olivier by May Sinclair. A modernist masterpiece from an unjustly forgotten author.
The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin. Playful and witty - this novel is made up entirely of dialogue as hundreds stand in line for days never really certain what they are queuing for.
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. The perfect, magical fairytale to curl up with on a rainy day.
Stoner by John Williams. A heartbreaking novel about the loneliness of academia.
The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig. An aching look at the desperate and lonely lives of women in post WWI Germany.

Toronto Film Festival - lots of book adaptations coming this fall. . .

Excuse me for a moment of Torontocentrisim but this is one of those days when I absolutely love this city. Time for the annual craziness that is the Toronto International Film Festival. Single tickets went on sale this morning and after staying up late last night shuffling my various flowcharts, maps and too many post-its to count, and then struggling with an overburdened website that kept crashing on me, I have finally emerged victorious with tickets for 17 films. Lots of book adapations will be coming to screens this fall, (although I'm still waiting for Coetzee's Disgrace which I saw last year at TIFF to surface). Nevertheless if you are the type who likes to read the book first, grab a pencil.

Movies that I did manage to get a ticket for include The Boys are Back based on the memoir by Simon Carr and starring the oh-so-handsome Clive Owen. Then there is the film She, A Chinese directed by the multi-talented Xiaolu Guo and based on her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers. I'll also be catching the animated film My Dog Tulip, based on the classic memoir by J. R. Ackerley. The voices are provided by Christopher Plummer, Lynn Redgrave and Isabella Rossellini. Speaking of classics, I also have a ticket to the gala premiere of Dorian Gray, based of course on Oscar Wilde's famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. This pic just happens to star Colin Firth (!) and Ben Chaplin. I'll report back.

There's also a lot of buzz about the film adapation of Sapphire's Precious , Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Up in the Air, based on the very funny novel by Walter Kirn. This movie stars George Clooney and he's perfectly cast as the main character who is obsessed with racking up his air miles. Authors are also the subject of a couple of films. Jane Campion's latest, Bright Star, details the love affair between John Keats and Fanny Brawne. And the opening film is Creation, directed by Jon Amiel and starring Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin, just beginning to write On the Origin of Species, with Jennifer Connolly as his wife Emma. I'm sure these last two films will get wide distribution later in the fall.

Ten days of coffee-fueled adrenalin. Can't wait.

Guardian First Book Award Longlist Announced

The longlist for the Guardian First Book Award 2009 was announced last Friday, August 31st. The longlisted books are:

• The Secret Lives of Buildings, by Edward Hollis, coming from Henry Holt in North America (non-fiction)
• Direct Red, by Gabriel Weston, Bond Street Books (non-fiction)
• The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmelo, Basic Books (non-fiction)
• A Swamp Full of Dollars, by Michael Peel, IB Tauris (non-fiction)
• The Rehearsal, by Eleanor Catton, Granta in the UK, coming from Little Brown Spring 2010 (novel)
• The Wilderness, by Samantha Harvey, Nan A. Talese Books (novel)
• The Girl With Glass Feet, by Ali Shaw, coming January 2010 in North America from Henry Holt (novel)
• The Selected Works of TS Spivet, by Reif Larsen, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin (novel)
• An Elegy for Easterly, by Petina Gappah, Faber (short story)
• The Missing, by Sian Hughes, Salt (poetry)

The lucky winner receives a £10,000 prize. Previous winners of the Guardian First Book Award have included Zadie Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer.

The five shortlisted books will be announced in November and the overall winner will be announced in December.

It's such an interesting list, and I'm thrilled to be representing three of the books on it- The Secret Lives of Buildings, The Rehearsal, and The Girl With the Glass Feet. I've also had a copy of 'The Selected Works of TS Spivet' sitting on my coffee table since July that I've been meaning to get to.

This announcement can't have come at a better time- I'm heading off on holiday next week and desperately needed some help shortening the list of books I wanted to bring with me. I always find packing my books much harder than packing my clothes, as my typical vacation reading 'longlist' looks more like the IMPAC Dublin Longlist (much, much, longer than the one above)...

If Memoir is the Food of Love, (or Love of Food), Read On. . .

There are a lot of interesting food memoirs coming out this fall, and here's one of the first - out next week. In The Gastronomy of Marriage: A Memoir of Food and Love, Michelle Maisto starts to fall for Rich on their first date when he orders a chocolate soufflé. Later when she visits his apartment and sees a DVD of A Room With A View on his television set, it pretty much seals the deal. "A decade after first seeing the movie, I still pined for a man who could kiss me with the urgency that George kissed Lucy in the field of violets," she writes. (Sigh. Don't we all?) Rich loves food, loves to cook, is a huge reader and obviously has great taste in movies. By this time I'm half in love with the man myself.

The two become engaged and start living together in an apartment in Brooklyn and the book focuses on the year leading up to their wedding. In particular it looks at the compromises and conflicts that inevitably ensue when two independent people start living together. Closets and cupboards; Maisto focuses on the latter. He likes eating meat; she doesn't. She likes her peanut butter in the fridge, cold and crunchy. He wants it warm and creamy in the cupboard. These may seem like minor details, but anyone who's experienced this will nod in recognition. (I've had several heated discussions over my refusal to part with my beloved Marmite. Sorry, it's non-negotiable.) Still, food and cooking brings the two of them closer together especially as they explore each other's cultural heritages and try not to overly stress about the wedding plans. I'll be honest - there are parts of this memoir that are bit too syrupy for my tastes, but it's a good premise and I think will definitely appeal to young couples and readers who preferred the "Julie Powell" story of Julie and Julia. There are also recipes sprinkled throughout the narrative and I did get a good tip on how to prevent what the Americans call Popovers and what I call Yorkshire Pudding, from deflating after it leaves the oven.

Turkish Literature. . .

Istanbul is one of those cities that I definitely want to visit some day. The Guardian's latest top 10 list is on Turkish literature, chosen by author Selçuk Altun. You can view the full list here. It includes Memed, My Hawk by Yaskar Kemal, translated by Edouard Roditi and available as one of NYRB's Classics, and two books by Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red, translated by Erdag Goknar, and Istanbul: Memories and the City, translated by Maureen Freely. Pamuk will also have a new novel - his first since winning the Nobel - out this fall. It's called The Museum of Innocence and is a romantic love story that involves obsessive collecting.

I have a few advance galleys of this new novel available. If you'd like a copy, send me an e-mail to mscott@randomhouse.com with "Museum of Innocence" in the subject line. I'll accept requests until noon EST on Thursday, Sept. 3rd and then randomly draw from all the entries received. Regrets that this offer is only available to Canadian public, school or academic librarians or teachers.

Becoming obsessed with our favourite authors. . .

I think many of us who are passionate readers go looking for advice and wisdom as much from our favourite authors as any self-help guru. I think of that scene in Mike Leigh's movie Career Girls when one of the characters waves a copy of Wuthering Heights around, her thumb randomly selecting a passage to channel Emily Bronte's messages from beyond the grave.

In Rosalind Brackenbury's new novel, Becoming George Sand, Maria is a happily married academic living in Edinburgh and working on a biography of the flamboyant and passionate 19th century French writer George Sand. Happy that is, until she meets a young, sexy colleague in a bookstore and the two begin an affair. All sorts of logistical problems ensue as Maria discovers how difficult it is to commit adultery in these modern times. And she wonders, how did George Sand ever manage all of her affairs (with Chopin and Alfred de Musset, among many others), take care of her children, and still find time to write multiple novels? As she continues her research Maria follows in the steps of her heroine, seeking inspiration from Sand's life to enable her to make tough choices in her own. In particular she retraces (with her husband) the memorable and miserable trip Sand and Chopin took to Majorica and this literary pilgrimage has a definitive impact on Maria's marriage. This was a very enjoyable novel to read; lighter in tone than say, Michael Cunningham's The Hours, but similar in reflecting on the ways literature and past lives can influence or shed insight into the moral conundrums of today. And it will have you searching out some of Sand's own work. For some added fun, you can combine a reading of this novel with a couple of films that explore aspects of Sand's life. The stunning Juliette Binoche plays her in Children of the Century, which focuses on her relationship with de Musset. Then you can switch to the fabulous Judy Davis in Impromptu which looks at her affair with Chopin (played unfortunately by a miscast Hugh Grant who irritatingly coughs his way through the entire film). Still, Emma Thompson is terrific in this movie as a silly, rich, society woman desperate to belong to this bohemian crowd that delights in making fun of her. Both films are available on DVD.

And coming at the end of September is a novel I'm looking forward to reading - Stephanie Barron's The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf - a mystery involving the discovery of Woolf's last diary, which sheds light on her relationship with Vita Sackville-West and the wonderful White Garden that Vita and her husband created at Sissinghurst Castle (I've visited this famous garden and it's definitely worth a trip if you are ever in Sussex). You might recognize Barron's name from the many popular mysteries she has written starring Jane Austen as her sleuth. I haven't read these, but I think I may be reading my first ever vampire novel. Coming later this fall is Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford. The premise is that Austen is alive and well, living as a vampire and bookstore owner in upstate New York. But she's frustrated that she can't capitalize on the royalties from her previous novels and her new book is being rejected by publishers everywhere. Yeah, I'll bite.

Dewey Top 100: Recent Elementary Books

With school just a few weeks away, the Dewey Divas and Dudes created this brochure for our school wholesalers listing 100 picks of excellent, recently published children's books. The list is separated into three grade categories - books suitable for K-3, 4-6 and 7-8. We thought this might be of interest also to teachers, public librarians and any readers who have little ones in their lives. If you'd like a copy of the brochure, please e-mail me directly at mscott@randomhouse.com and I'll e-mail you the PDF (sorry, I'm not techno-savvy enough to figure out how to post it on the blogsite).

Please note that this is by no means a "Best of all children's books list" as of course it only reflects those publishing imprints that the Deweys represent. They do all come with the Dewey seal of approval however - the reps have read and loved them, and these titles were chosen also because they compliment school curriculum. This list reflects books that have all been published in the last two years and all publishing and price information is Canadian. However, if there are any U.S. or International readers out there who would like a copy, I'm happy to e-mail it to you also - just be advised that some of the titles may not yet be available in your country, or they may be published by a different publisher. In Canada, all of these books are available and can be ordered or bought at your regular bookstore, wholesaler or using online sources.

A tale of dandelion derring-do

Christopher Nibble is a guinea pig who lives in Dandeville where the residents rely heavily on dandelions for their daily sustenance. However, because of over harvesting and wastefulness, the much revered dandelion is on the verge of extinction. Christopher wants to help and he decides that the best way to begin is by doing research at the library. Then he devises a clever plan to save the dandelions and becomes a hero in Dandeville. This strong environmental message is accompanied by fun and unique collage-style pictures that mix
photographs and drawings.
Christoper Nibble

Shirley Hughes - for adults!

Shirley Hughes is beloved for her children's books, but the bestselling author has recently published her first graphic novel - for adults. Bye Bye Birdie is a scream; I was chuckling all through it. It's a completely wordless story about a man who sees an attractively dressed woman on the street, follows her, courts her and marries her. She seems shy and demure, hiding behind her thick muff, with her feathered hat pulled low. But when the couple gets home and she reveals her hidden beak, the man turns and runs. And runs. But if you know your Hitchcock, you know there's nothing like a scorned bird. Will the man be able to escape her claws, and still keep his hat on?

The energetic illustrations are just wonderful in this surreal, madcap story. Older kids will get a laugh out of it as well.