Saturday, November 28, 2009

Most Pretentious Columnist of 2009: Leah McLaren

Leah McLaren needs to be stopped. She's a terrible writer; a pretentious and irrelevant columnist and, judging by this youtube video, a dim and inarticulate public speaker.


I felt the need to take her to task here ( as I often do on twitter).


Need more of McLaren's ridiculous take on the literary world? : read this about her evasion of Award Winners.

I'd link to her novel, The Continuity Girl, but like me you may be tempted to seek it out and it would be a complete and utter waste of money.

Ironic that someone so set on defending and brandishing literary fiction like a high-flying banner writes so terribly.


BOO


p.s. I'm not the only one with this viewpoint, check out the Quill and Quire post after her Awards column .... ha ha ha !

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Friday, November 27, 2009

To Dance at the Palais Royale by Janet McNaughton


This book has been sitting on my shelf for years and I never picked it up. So, preparing for a bus ride to London for a long weekend, I tossed it in my bag and read it while waiting for the bus then finished it on the bus. It is a quick, lovely, languid read.

Aggie leaves her large family and domestic role as a housekeeper in Scotland to move to Canada in the late 1920s. Toronto's elite hanker after the idea of British and Scottish domestic workers and Aggie has no trouble securing a position in the Deer Park area of Toronto ( near St. Clair West and Yonge).

I live in Forest Hill ( very near where the Stockwood`s mansion would be fictionally set )and felt that I was transported back to a city I love in Aggie`s time. The streetcars rumbled, yes, but over tracks still primitive and new; Royal York on Front Street had not finished completion; Union Station ( which McNaughton describes as a hallowed, hollow cathedral ) stood loftily as the biggest building Aggie had ever seen and the mythical Sunnyside park near the harbour was filled with stands selling redhots; dance pavilions; mirth and merriment.

McNaughton spins us into a world of colour and prosperity in a booming post-war Canada. Aggie meets Rose, an indelible flapper; Rodney a posh Queens undergrad who shirks his father`s stock business to pursue history and Rachel, a domestic servant like herself sponsored by an upstanding man named Moshe: who saves her from the travesty of liquidation and hardship in pre-Nazi Poland.

This world: the markets and kiosks of Spadina when clashed with the ferries to Center Island; the upscale Rosedale mansions; luncheons at the King Edward and traipses around Eatons and Simpsons is a finely rendered friction.

McNaughton does well at painting the often invisible line between classes ( and the internal skepticism of jewish residents and other immigrants like Rachel) as Aggie weaves in and out with little more than a fancy dress and a few well-thought lies.

Having experienced all corners of bustling Toronto: prejudice, social injustice, women`s burgeoning roles, sexual awakening and a strengthening independence, she is able to carve her own world and leave her own stamp on the booming city: this includes meeting a wonderfully painted Newfoundlander named Will with a sing-song dialect and a lackadaisical way about him.

Each dialect from each of the worlds Aggie visits ( including her own Scotch dialect ) are perfect.

The story is brilliantly told and unfolds so subtly you are swept up in its simple beauty.

I heartily hope that McNaughton abandons the more stark and futuristic novels of her recent distopian fiction and returns to more yarns like this one.

Beautiful, historical, full of promise. Ending on a shrill, high note that even the lingering Stock Crash ( waiting around the corner like a tiger with teeth pried open ) can sever and mute.



WONDERFUL!

Highly recommended



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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Jane Urquhart does LM Montgomery: YAWN!


Okay Jane Urquhart,

I need you to know that writing this breaks my heart because I love you. You know I love you. I have told you so. In person. Thrice.


So, because of this love, I was interested to see how you would squeeze the life of my goddess, LM Montgomery, into the specifications of the new Penguin Great Canadians series.

Especially because last year was inundated with Montgomery-this and Centenary-that ( the best offerings being the Rubio biography and that nice little book Waterston wrote linking Montgomery’s prose to life--- those were good times. Then there was the Gammel offering (isn’t there always??) in which, again, she tried too hard and then the Epperly-edited scrapbook which is just as much fun to say as it is to read and Epperly is the greatest thing SINCE Montgomery, so there you are and of course all the Sullivan crap and the prequel. Whew: last year in a nutshell).


So, I was anticipating this would happen eventually and heard it advertised at every Montgomery event I attended ( last year there seemed to be dozens; I was always flitting there and here and back) and I was excited:


You are imaginative, Jane Urquhart ( see Changing Heaven ) and poetic ( Hello, Away! ) and historic ( hello, Stone Carvers) and atmospheric ( See Map of Glass) and perchance more Bronte than Montgomery --- but Maud hankered after the Brontes so caps off to that. And you are graciously and refreshingly fun when you banter with Victoria Holt at IFOA…yet….



Preambling aside, I cracked open this tiny volume and, I really hate to say it, hate to, Jane ‘cause I love you, found The Magic of Wings: The Coles Note version

In any other circumstance, I would be all for your romantic speculation and pretty-decent conceptualization of Montgomery ’s thought processes and intuitive nature but here…. Because there was such a stellar biography to satisfy my every whim and whet this insatiable appetite, I was left going ….. meh.

And then the cover sucked ( which is not your fault)

But, really, this was just unremarkable. Nothing new. Nothing that tilted my perspective ( is that because there is nothing new….. I mean the whole suicide “Revelation”: not so much revelatory to anyone who has followed Montgomery at all? ); nothing that sparked me to clutch my hands to my chest and squee just….


Erm…. Okay. Been there read that.


But Jane Urquhart, I love you. So, I salute you for trying. It just wasn’t needed ( Did I just say that? About a Montgomery book? Egads) and just paled in comparison ( scope and otherwise) to the Rubio.

In fact, at one point, I put this down and picked the Rubio up and settled into something a lot more comfortable and appealing.



But, two thumbs up for coming out and for trying.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

death to KINDLE

Dear Bloggosphere,

on the occasion of the Kindle being available in Canada:


Books were invented to be read. READ THEM! Open them, smell them, hold them. Run your fingers along their spines. Give them as gifts, covet and cuddle and coddle them. ….

Books: the platform of imagination, theory, critique, thoughts-taking-form ………. All scintillatingly fit into one harmless little square of paper and ink; of smell and light.


BOOKS Are TANGIBLE! Make your reading experience tangible. Hold your book! Run your fingers on perforated pages; feel the glassy, glossy imprint of a sheen sheet between your fingers.


Or, alternatively, buy a piece of technology and download your words onto an unfeeling ipod. Who wants to curl up with a fireplace, a candle, a blanket and ….an ipod?


This holiday season buy your books from bookstores! Read books! … not files….

Save pdfs and the like for work and blogging and, you know, internet things…..


Books are for reading. Read them. Buy them.


You can’t fit an electric file into a stocking. …. ( perchance you can but not much fun, is it)


This Christmas BOYCOTT the Canadian Kindle, walk into your favourite bookstore and buy a real book.

Sunday, November 08, 2009

blog? there's no time for blog!!!

I am too busy watching this over and over again.

( and yes, the dog is canon)

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Is Hearing an Author Read before Reading their books the same as watching a movie before reading the book...................

[me and Sir Ian]


I tip my cap at Linwood Barclay today because he really is brilliant and charming and funny and last night he was in a sticky spot the: I’M SIGNING WITH RANKIN spot. This has been a kerfuffle in the past, as well. Author who is offered a spot with Rankin can look at it in two ways: 1.) great exposure with ( what an usher last night told me) was the biggest signing of the festival ( and most usually is) 2.) a lot of sitting by yourself at a table with a bottle of water and a few stragglers who heard you read and hit up the Ben McNally booth.


As I was standing in line waiting for Rankin, I kept looking over at good-natured Linwood and reminding myself exactly how pitch-perfect his reading and chat earlier in the evening were. He was funny, down-to-earth, Canadian, bright, intelligent and though I tend to prefer my hardboiled ( or soft boiled in the way of tea cosy) UK mystery authors, Barclay inspired me to hunt down his fiction.

I stood and shifted my weight and wondered, having read none other than his magnificent Toronto Star columns , would his fiction be the same? Last night’s intro and readings were entertaining and amusing because he emphasized, cajoled and teetered with his prose in a comfortable way that, he: the author, could slip into like an old University hoody.

Would the Linwood Barclay I saw at the Norma Fleck Dance Theatre: the Barclay of great dialogue, nuance, script and humorous undertone, translate to book form?

Is seeing an author live before reading their book the same as watching a movie before reading the book?

Hmmm. Barclay’s a fantastic reader, does that ruin the reading experience if I detach his prose from his presence?

I got to thinking about the good, the bad, and the ugly of IFOA readings during my half a dozen years of attendance.

Rankin is always a hit with the audience because he has this lackadaisical rock-star thing going. Very much like Neil Gaiman, his mere presence asserts an immediate sit-up-in-seat reaction. I had read him long before I saw him and seeing him read again and again just heightens and rounds-out my love for his fiction.

Kenneth Oppel’s reading of Airborn was the most innovative I had ever been to. The kids in the audience were mesmerized as he donned a white lab coat, and used a meter stick to point out the different parts of an airship on an overhead screen. He was the zany scientist: a thorough geek who loved his subject matter and had the kids in awed giggles. When I was midway through Oppel’s Starclimber and felt he was unforgiving in his departure from great adventure story to stodgy: “must round out Matt and Kate relationship” I called this moment to the book’s defense and let Oppel off the hook. Personalized moment=influencing book.

Then you have Michael Crummey who was born to spin a yarn ( and is, as you know, Canada ’s cutest author--- hate to be superficial, but its true) and invites you into a long oral trajectory from St. John’s--- all down-to-earth, clear and engaging like the audience is sitting round a campfire listening to something that strings them along....

And CC Humphreys who knows he is a good reader and uses that confident flair ( and British accent) to present dramatically in a very captivating way.

If we go back to Dickens and Twain we know that an author’s on-stage marketing of their work ( and simultaneously themselves) is not something new. Heck, even Coleridge and Wordsworth were considered celebrities. Had spunky Jane Austen and eruditely unique Charlotte Bronte decided to unlatch their pseudonyms, I have a feeling they would have been wonderfully eloquent in drawing rooms.

Also, I don't usually get my picture taken with authors (read:this is the first time. But, Ian Rankin is a ROCK STAR)





Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Just Some Shameless Anthony Horowitz Love


Anthony Horowitz: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1.) Foyle’s War
2.) Foyle’s War
3.) Alex RIDER ( even the stupid ones near the end and Mickey Roarke in the film!)
4.) The Diamond Bros ( the Falcon’s Malteser! Hello!)
5.) The most atmospheric Shakespearian tale for young readers on the market The Devil and His Boy
6.) Those scary books that people keep sending me ARCs of---what are those called? ---anyways, those are good too…
7.) Foyle’s War
8.) Midsomer Murders (!!)
9.) Groosham Grange!


Oh Groosham Grange you are the funniest thing I have read in ages. I was killing myself on the subway this morning. The word play! The heebee jeebees. The “note to booksellers” ( in this ARC) expressing that this is the most personal of his work because he went to a boarding school at age 8 and was fairly convinced that all of his teachers were monsters.


Funny stuff! From David’s log to the ghastly and grisly conditions imparted to those on the roll ( no parents allowed at this school cast off on an ominous island near Norfolk: lest they can swim; no punishments or penalties; but one vacation day granted a year). This is gold for the grades 4-6 crowd. Coupled with Half Minute Horrors ( a collection of perfect little tales crafted to snatch the imagination of reluctant readers and keep them chilled ), there is a lot of wondrous fright available for the young reader.

I could pinpoint what insane and zany moments would inspire the most giggles from 8-10 year olds. Perhaps the hymn-singing priest who has a heart attack of sheer fright when he hears the words “ Groosham Grange” uttered or Gregor: the hunchback who stepped out of those horrific lab-experiment-frankenstein stories and into this world or the headmaster who cannot see his own reflection in a mirror or the teacher who has nice teeth—which she keeps in a jar on her desk.


This is giddy, terrific fun and I had a hoot reading it.

Anthony Horowitz: you rock my socks. Always have! And on behalf of people dedicated to finding perfect solutions for those reluctant boy readers, you have solved many a problem!

Kids clamor for the Alex Rider series and they should clamor for this too!

Lots of good clamoring to be had!