I work in news, so it's possible I just feel like certain stories are always running, but I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Toronto's mayor, Rob Ford, is in the news way more than he ought to be. For ridiculous things. I've only lived in Toronto for four and half years. It is, if I'm honest, a city I never wanted to live in. Toronto always seemed so big and impenetrable and busy, but it turns out that once you get out of the car and start walking around (and get yourself a home base) it's a great place to live. I've lived in three distinct neighbourhoods since moving here and my job means commuting from downtown to the north part of the city – part of the city formerly known as North York. The more time I spend here, getting to know different neighbourhoods and learning to better navigate the transit system, the more I love this city. Edward Keenan, author of Some Great Idea also loves this city, and he turned his relationship with Toronto in a book that should be on every nightstand in the city.
Some Great Idea is an analysis of post-amalgamation Toronto – just the past 15 years, plus a few important influencers from the city's history. To describe it broadly, Keenan's book gives a rundown of what happened when the City of Toronto was amalgamated with its neighbouring municipalities (Etobicoke, York, North York, East York, and Scarborough) and then looks at the work and legacies of the three post-amalgamation mayors: Mel Lastman, David Miller, and Rob Ford, who is still in office. Each one brought his own brand of urbanism to bear and, says Keenan, each one mobilized a core of people, exciting his followers and infuriating his opponents and thus drawing an increasing number of voices into city politics. Of course, you can't talk about the city now without talking about its past, and Keenan folds the stories of historically important Torontonians into his narrative, as well as looking at how the various pieces of the new city had been planned and developed. It is, for someone who didn't grow up in Toronto, and incredibly edifying view of the city.
I am not a particularly strategic reader. Okay, that isn't entirely true, but I don't feel strategic when I choose books. I do make an effort (although it's hardly a chore) to read predominantly female authors and also focus on Canadian lit. This doesn't mean I won't read men, or that I don't read international offerings, but there are a lot of books out there and, consciously or not, most readers have a way of narrowing down what makes it into their to-be-read pile. Sometimes genre can be enough, but whatever way you choose your next read, chances are that a strategy is involved. In the last while, part of my strategy has been to read more short story collections. I really like short fiction, so it has been a happy turn of events that CanLit Knit has embraced short stories as well. Most recently we read Miranda Hill's Sleepy Funny, and although it wasn't everyone's favourite so far, it was mine.
The first story is set in a tony neighbourhood in a city I feel I should recognize, but can't quite (it could be Toronto or Vancouver, or a fictional mash up, but I'm not sure it quite matters). The neighbourhood is a cul de sac on which all the families are friends, the women are all successful, and everyone follows a sort of unwritten code. And then a new family moves in. The premise is not unique, but the way the story unfolds is nonetheless satisfying in the way Hill uses and subverts the tropes were accustomed to. The story is told from the perspectives of several of the women who live in the niehgbourhood, offering insight into their lives and children and views of the new neighbour, Michal Revivo-Smitherman, her husband, and their three children.
So, I'm not totally sure what happened to January except that it seems to have blown by and, despite my best intentions every week, I never managed to make it over here. My work schedule has changed a bit, and I was away, and there are lots of reasons that January was a bad blogging month, but that stops now, because it's February and high time I got my act together. January was, I should say, an excellent reading month, and one of the definite high points was Alan Bradley's latest Speaking from Among the Bones. I am generally quite sceptical about series. I don't like getting sucked in and feeling obliged to read each new book as it comes out, especially since I tend to outgrow series and then become increasingly disappointed with each book as I (and likely the author) get tired of the characters and the plots. All of that being said, Flavia de Luce has yet to disappoint, and although we're getting to the point in the series where Bradley must necessarily offer the background of his previous books as little asides, his plots and intrigue remain as fresh and fun as ever.
The novel opens with Flavia and her sister Ophelia in St. Tancred's church, where Feely (as she is affectionately/not-so-affectionately know) is practicing on the organ and Flavia is contemplating the grisly scene of St. John the Baptist's decapitation. Feely is practicing the organ because she has taken over as the parish organist, the previous organist having gone missing about six months previous. It's a week before Easter and, on top of that, mere days before the tomb of St. Tancred is to be opened. Feely, though, is complaining about the sound of some of the pipes, so she and Flavia go into the organ – something Flavia didn't know was possible – to check things out and find a bat inside there with them, which terrifies Feely and sends them both home. I had no idea such a thing was possible and, I have to say, it's little value-added details like the names of the organ pipes that make Bradley such a good read.
It has been radio silence over here for a couple of weeks and I'm sorry about that. December has been a little nuts – I'm knitting all my Christmas gifts (if you're a family member, do not click that link) – and although I've been reading a tonne, I haven't had any time to write about it. I am super looking forward to lots of book writing (that is, writing about books) in the New Year, but in the meantime, how about we turn things around a little.
I met Melissa Leong when we sat two desks away from each other in the National Post Arts & Life section a year and a half ago. We've both since moved (she to Financial Post and I to news), but let me tell you, she's an excellent writer. When I heard that she'd self-published a YA novel, I was both impressed and not surprised – Melissa always comes across as one of those amazingly energetic people, and that she'd want to branch out from journalism seemed natural. Anyway, What Kills Me was released earlier this year (under the pseudonym Wynne Channing) and tells the story of a 17-year-old exchange student who accidentally becomes a vampire and then has to fight for her life when the vampires think she is embodiment of an ancient prophecy and destined to kill them all.
If you're thinking that doesn't sound like normal Books Under Skin fodder, well, you're right, but I always have time for good writing, and something different. To that end, Melissa and I did a little Q&A about her book, the process of self publishing, and how she found time to write a novel while also working full time. If you have a vampier fan on your Christmas list (and these days, who doesn't), I can't recommend What Kills Me highly enough – not only will you be buying a well-written, fun novel, but you'll be supporting a great author. How can you go wrong?
Q There are a lot of vampire novels out there and it would be easy to think the market was saturated – what prompted you to write your novel? Did you think there was something lacking in the genre (are vampires even a genre)? A I was told that that the market was saturated with vamps; but this was the story that lived in my head and the story that I wanted to tell. I didn’t write it in response to Twilight or to push new boundaries. I wrote the novel as if there was no comparison. Q Okay, that was three questions in one, sorry. During the day, you work as a reporter – did you find it hard to slip off that writing style for fiction? A No worries. I’m a reporter. I love questions. I don’t find it hard to put my author hat on. Storytelling is storytelling. But being a young adult author is starting to affect my day job: I talk a lot with my fans via Twitter, Facebook, and emoticons and exclamation marks are creeping into my work emails. (Hi Mr. Cabinet Minister, I’d LOVE to interview you about the budget :-P TTYL!)
Q As a full-time reporter and a dance instructor, when did you find time to write a novel? A I have no clue. Seriously. No clue. Someone needs to tell me how I did this so I can do it again and finish the sequel. I think I mostly kept the hours of a, uh, vampire and wrote in the middle of the night.
Q In your National Post article about self-publishing, you give a really good primer of sorts on what to think about then going that route. What surprised you most about the process? A did not anticipate two things: Promoting your novel is a full-time job (see earlier comment about vampire hours). Second, indie authors are freakishly friendly. They rally around you with advice and support. I’ve never experienced anything like it. And I’ve totally drank the juice — I’ve got the “welcome” sign on my chest for newbies and I’m happy to lend a hand.
Q You mention in the article that you have a second novel as well. Now that you know the ropes, do you think you'll continue to self-publish? A Right now, I enjoy being an indie author. You have total control of everything: price, timelines, the cover, etc. And I’m really excited to put out the sequel next year. Now that I know what I’m doing, the entire journey will be that much more awesome.
Q Speaking of second novels, all the reviews I've read about What Kills Me end with the reviewers' eagerness for book two. Is this destined to become a series? A I wrote it as a three-part series. The reason for the delay is that I wanted to gauge reader reaction before I continued with Book Two. You never know what people will like, right?
Q Officially, What Kills Me is by Wynne Channing, which is obviously not your name. I always thought pen names were to distance an author from a novel, but you've shown no signs of that. Why did you choose to use one? A Since I was writing about my experience for the National Post, I wanted to choose a neutral name, one that had no attachment to my journalist self. I wanted to see if I could make a run at this publishing thing all on my own. And my journalist self might want to write non-fiction one day so this leaves all doors open.
Q Not that I think of you as especially scandalous, but has engaging with a younger, YA audience made you think differently about the way you present yourself in public (social media, and whatnot)? A I’m not scandalous but I swear. A lot. I work in a newsroom. We use profanity as much as we use punctuation. That, I’ve had to cut down on via Facebook and Twitter. Not that I think the YA crowd can’t handle it, it’s just not nice.
Q That age group tends to be very good at fandom – do you hear from your readers? A Several times a week! It’s my favourite thing in the universe: fan mail. And it comes so readily through social media.
Q Where can people find your book? I know What Kills Me is available for the Kindle, but if you don't have an ereader, is there a way to buy hardcopies? A Yes! It comes in digital form, and in paperback for traditionalists.
As far as I can remember, I've never dyed my hair. It's possible I used one of the 12-wash dyes in the summer once, but I have no real memory of doing so. This is less a style thing than a laziness thing, since once you start dyeing your hair you kind of have to keep going, and because I'm one of those people who only gets two or three haircuts a year, it just wouldn't work out. How is any of this relevant to a book blog? Well, after reading Emily Schultz's novel The Blondes, I haven't been able to stop thinking about hair colour and natural vs. synthetic colours, and it has made me think more deeply than I would have thought possible about my own dyeing choices.
Off the top, I should say this isn't a non-fiction book about the history of hair colour or anything like that. It's a novel, and although it has various plot lines, the one relating to the title is that of an epidemic affecting only girls and women with blonde hair – either dyed or natural. This "disease" – dubbed Blonde Fury because it drives these blonde women to attack others – spreads like wildfire around the world, forcing airports into lockdown and governments into creating "containment areas." The pandemic, though, is only half of the story, which is narrated by Hazel Hayes, who has just discovered she's pregnant.
Kingston, Ontario, has got to be one of my favourite cities in Canada. For one, it's beautiful – think old limestone buildings covered with ivy overlooking the lake – and for another, it's where I did my undergrad, so I had four years to properly explore and get to know it. I even spent a summer there, something many undergrads never do in their university town, and I have to say, it just got better when the population dipped and the temperature soared. Above all, maybe, Kingston had a lively and varied arts scene, with both bands and authors constantly visiting (and, also making it there home). In all this richness, then, it is perhaps understandable that some of its artists would be forgotten; or, if not forgotten, at least not actively remembered. Such is the case with the poet Tom Marshall, who also first went to Kingston to attend Queen's, and ended up making his life there. Although I studied English at Queen's and was active in the creative writing community there, I don't recall ever hearing of him, which is quite surprising since, if the new collection The Essential Tom Marshall is to be taken as representative, he wrote a great deal about the city.
The poems in the collection were chosen by authors David Helwig and Michael Ondaatje, friends of the late Tom Marshall, and while it isn't clear whether the poems are presented chronologically, there is a cadence to their progression as Marshall's tone rises and falls. It is a slim collection, though, and as a result cannot feature many of of Marshall's longer poems – although a few are included. Reading through it, then, you almost feel you are reading many verses of a larger work, which allows the poems to both sit by themselves and slot into one another as images and emotions are repeated.
It has been quite a while since I posted on a Monday, but when Todd from The Workhorsery e-mailed me about a Halloween blog tour he was planning, I couldn't say no. Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies by Victoria Dunn is The Workhorsery's third book and, while this is unrelated to the blog tour, given the recentcraziness in publishing it is really awesome to see an independent continuing to publishing interesting and fun Canadian work. The Workhorsery released a book trailer for Alice four months ago. It was the first book trailer I ever watched right the way through and then rewatched immediately. If you haven't seen it, it's posted below.
So, with all of that in the background, when Todd asked me what I was interested in doing for my stop of the tour (today is Day 1) I knew I wanted to talk about the trailer. The impetus for promotion is increasingly placed on authors as publishing houses lose those resources (both staff and money) and I wanted to explore that a little. I was initially just going to post the e-mail Q&A I did with Victoria Higgins and Meghan Dunn (collectively known as Victoria Dunn), but they got into it even before my questions started, so I've included that part of the e-mail too.
Finally, before the questions start and the book trailer rolls (you really should watch it – the song will be stuck in your head all day), one last bit of business. The Workhorsery is holding a blog tour contest. Whoever comes up with the best answer to the question the best answer to the question "should zombies have human rights?" will receive a special Workhorsery prize pack, which will include:
autographed copies of all three of our novels (Victoria Dunn's Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies; Derek Winkler's Pitouie; and Jocelyne Allen's You and the Pirates)!
a genuine zombie crotchet doll, possibly from the book trailer itself, definitely specially-crafted by the author(s) herself/themselves!
some other secret stuff related to the novel that we're keeping top secret!
a hand-made, super-limited addition Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies Workhorsery tote bag to carry it all in!
To win, e-mail your answer to read@theworkhorsery.ca or tweet them @theworkhorsery before Nov. 7.
Alright, let the blog tour begin!
(E-mail correspondence below. I'm in black, Victoria Dunn is in purple.)
First, I’m not sure if you would rather answer as Victoria Dunn or as Victoria and Meghan, so I’ll let you choose.
We answered as Victoria Dunn, our evil hive mind, using the royal we. But we’re not stuck up, honest.
But, can you let me know? If you choose to answer as yourselves (or, individually, as the case may be) can you indicate who is saying what? That way, if you squabble about an answer, we can all be in on it.
Victoria Dunn frequently argues with herself. Although rarely about anything pertaining to writing. The most recent argument was whether the cups suit in our zombie tarot deck represents sex, or if zombies and sex are two great tastes that do not taste great together. However, we do agree that tasting zombies is not generally a good idea. Some background for your readers: Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies began life as an entry in the 2009 International 3-Day Novel Contest, a Vancouver based contest held every Labour Day weekend. We won 3rd place in that competition, and we’ve been doing all of our first drafts this way ever since. We’re both big fans of the creative rush of writing tens of thousands of words all at once, and the inevitable sleep-deprivation leads to some inspired – and occasionally insane – plot twists.
1. When you were writing/had just finished Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies, did you give any thought to how you might promote it? Did you know that might be part of your job, as authors?
We were working on the promotion before the book was even done. Victoria works at a bookstore, so we understand how important it is to make sure the book gets into people’s hot little hands. We were stalking Trevor Strong of the Arrogant Worms before we even had a publishing contract, having discovered that he writes songs to order (after all, every novel needs its own theme song…). So, at our first meeting with our publisher, the Workhorsery, we were able to propose some ideas for promoting the novel including the book trailer and zombie beauty contests etc.
2. Whose idea was the book trailer? Had you seen any previously?
The problem with having an evil hive mind is that it’s impossible to figure out which ideas belong to which person. Or even who wrote what originally! Certainly the book trailer was something we agreed on from very early on, sometime between the midnight deadline of the 3-Day Novel contest and beginning the second draft a few months later. Which was, incidentally, when we noticed that in the first draft our airplane had crashed upside down, but had magically righted itself by the end of the chapter. It was several more months before we noticed that we’d accidentally handed a suicidal character a fully loaded gun. You’d almost think it had only been written in three days…
3. As compound authors, you’re obviously okay with collaboration, but were you ever worried about letting someone else handle to creative process when it came to the video?
We trusted Trevor completely, especially as neither of us has any musical ability at all. We still suffer flashbacks to traumatic middle school music classes. One of our music teachers was a Hungarian who’d fled the Soviets and liked to make students cry– this is when young Victoria became a Communist sympathizer. The rest of the video was entirely our creation. In fact, it was the first video we’d ever made! Can you tell? (The constantly shifting light levels might be a clue.)
4. Where was it filmed?
On the floor in the room at the front of Meghan’s house that really doesn’t have a name. She has fantasies that someday it will be a library with built in shelves and a sexy rolling ladder. Meghan believes in dreaming big!
5. The very, very catchy song was written and sung by Trevor Strong – did you consult? Were you ever worried he wouldn’t “get” your book?
It’s quite the earworm, isn’t it? When we hired Trevor, he gave us the option of telling him as much or as little about the book as we wanted. Some people who have hired him have apparently only shared the title of the book, but that seemed counterproductive to us. We wanted more than “Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies is a book! Please buy it!” on an endless loop. So we gave him characters and the basic plot, and confessed our ambitions for becoming fabulously successful authors and selling the movie rights. He ran with it, and we were delighted with the result.
6. Whose idea was it to crochet the characters?
Meghan was already making little TV characters out of crochet, such as tiny crocheted Starsky and Hutch facing off against little crocheted Satanists. Since we couldn’t afford to pay actors, it wasn’t a stretch to think that we might as well make them.
7. I see you’ve made the zombie pattern available on your website – are you hoping to inspire some Call Me Maybe-esque spin-offs?
That’d be wonderful! We’re also completely cool with fan fiction, even the really smutty kind (especially the really smutty kind). We promise never to stalk our fans and issue cease-and-desist orders, unless they’re making money off of our book and won’t give us a cut! We’re also encouraging our friends to come up with creative book covers, like the literary one on our website. One of our friends is currently working on a pulp 1950s magazine style cover. Can’t wait to see it!
8. With a story this fun, I feel like the sky is the limit when it comes to promotion. Besides the trailer and the blog tour, what do you have planned?
We’ve got more ideas than we have time or energy to execute. But on Halloween night we’ll be doing zombie tarot card reading at Collected Works bookstore. We’ll also be attending the Small Press Book Fair, Fall Edition in November, and in December we’ll be teaching teenagers how to crochet their very own zombie Christmas ornaments at a local high school. We really enjoy events like the Ottawa Geek Market and Toronto Word on the Street. We also visit bookstores, and have been known to pounce on complete strangers in the street and terrorize them into buying our book.
9. Both the book and the book trailer have been really well received. What do you think makes the zombie so appealing?
Zombies are adorably tenacious. It doesn’t matter if they lose an arm, a leg or half their body, they never give up on their goals. They don’t get stressed out about failure, either. Despite the whole hunger for human flesh, zombies are never malicious. They don’t hate you. They’ll never judge you. They just want to get up close and personal, because they think you’re a tasty treat. And that’s really a compliment when you think about it.
10. Will you be dressing up for Halloween?
Thanks to the zombie novel, we’ve been hanging out at the local Punk Flea Markets and buying pretty dresses with skull and zombie prints. Also, we have a growing collection of zombie t-shirts. It’s amazing how often zombies are exactly the right fashion statement to make. Zombie wear also works as a marketing tool, too! If someone asks about the t-shirt or the dress, it’s an opening to hand-sell the novel, or at least give them a bookmark. Meghan’s considering handing bookmarks out with the Halloween candy this year. If she does, she’ll definitely give them with candy, not instead of candy, because she doesn’t want her house egged.
Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies is available from your local independent bookstore. PLUS, the tour continues tomorrow and Wednesday! Check out The Eyrea on Tuesday and Open Book Toronto on Wednesday for more about Victoria Dunn, Alice Hearts Welsh Zombies an, well, zombies in general.
It's funny how certain books seem to just have a right time to be read. Often, these are books that you buy with the full intention of reading them immediately, and then for one reason or another, they sit on your shelf unread for years. This is not unusual with gifts – books that look interesting and suit your taste, but that weren't on your mental (or perhaps physical) to-read list, and so get slotted in and then put aside until their time comes. For a book purchased with excitement, though, it seems strange that you wouldn't open it right away. Nonetheless, that's what happened to my copy of Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness. I bought it the Christmas after it came out – soon enough that it's a hardcover, but late enough for it to have a cover line announcing its Man Booker win. I have meant to read it many times since then, but it wasn't until we decided to read it for CanLit Knit that I finally cracked the cover.
In classic Munro style, the majority of the stories in the collection are set in southwestern Ontario, and while some are contemporary, many are set ten or twenty or thirty years ago. The collection opens with one of the more contemporary stories. Dimensions is the story of a young woman who, at the beginning of the story, has clearly survived some kind of trauma. She is visiting someone, or trying to, and she has a therapist she has talked to about it. She has cut her hair short and dyed it – very different than the way he liked it, whoever he is – and moved towns. She is quiet and fragile seeming. And slowly, Munro unfolds her story. Doree met Lloyd when she was 16 and he was much older and a nurse looking after her dying mother. They get married, she gets pregnant, and three kids later she's in her early 20s and living in a farm house, largely cut off from other mothers and people her age. Lloyd is controlling, although she doesn't see him that way, and their household swings from fights to uneasy peace. When Doree meets a fellow home-schooling mom, who has a van and can help her with the kids, she allows a tentative friendship to form and one night, after fighting with Lloyd, she goes to Maggie's house to wait it out. He calls, Maggie tells him Doree will stay the night, and in the morning, Maggie drives her home and Lloyd is sitting on the front step. Inside, Doree's children are lying dead.
Stories about con artists, hustlers, and small-time thieves are usually pretty happy go lucky. I remember picking up Paper Moon as a kid and being totally fascinated by the world of tricks and sleight of hand that saw a father and daughter travelling around the country to make their fortune. For the most part, their crimes seemed victimless, and you just knew everything was going to work out. If this is what you're expecting when you pick up Billie Livingston's new novel One Good Hustle, prepare yourself: her perspective on cons is totally different.
The novel is the story of Sammie, the 16-year-old daughter of hustlers, and takes place during the summer between Grades 11 and 12. Sammie is living at a friend's – almost more of an acquaintance at the beginning – because her mother is depressed, suicidal, and has substance abuse problems. When Sammie decided she couldn't take it anymore (her mother could kill herself, but she didn't want to be there to watch), she left. Of course, that doesn't mean she isn't thinking about her mother, or worrying about her, or wondering where her dad is (her parents split up years ago), or hoping he'll come and take her away with him.
Short stories, as I said in my last post (sorry that it was two weeks ago – summer is messing with my schedule), make for great summer reading. Generally speaking, they require much less commitment than novels, meaning that if you forget your book at the cottage, or put it down for a few days, picking it up again is easy and relatively guilt-free. For more or less the same reasons, I think short story collections make for great book club picks. If someone can't finish (or has barely started), they can still be part of the discussion, there's less pressure not to spoil the ending, and chances are even if all the stories aren't universally liked, everyone will find one or two they connected with. At least, that's certain to be the case with Zsuzsi Gartner's Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, which was the pick for the inaugural CanLit Knit book club meeting.
I have been reading a lot of untraditional short stories lately (both successful and less so), but Gartner's collection was by far the most intriguing. Her stories are set largely on the West Coast, and mostly in Vancouver in a sort of present-adjacent. That is, the world of her characters is, on the surface at least, not very different than ours, but things happen that are just strange enough to make you question whether they're possible in the world we know. This kind of questioning, though, is what I loved most about Gartner's stories, because it forces you to wonder whether the action is actually happening, or if it just appears that way to the narrator.
Instead of the regularly-scheduled review I would normally run, today is going to be all about summer reading. If this seems like a cop-out, well, it is and it isn't. Besides being a place where I get to think and write about books every week, this blog is where I point people who ask me what I've been reading lately and ask what they should read next. Never do I have this conversation more than in the summer, when people want to know what to bring with them to the beach or the cottage, or just what they should be reading on the weekends. It seems that, even when people aren't on vacation, summer is their designated time to read for pleasure, whether that means it's filled with guilty-pleasure books of just time to read, period.
So, in the spirit of summer, I thought I'd do what I did last year and recommend some great summer reads, and also come clean about what I'm planning to read (I mean, you'd find out soon enough, but I guess this way you can track my success, or read along with me). I did this last year as well and people seemed to like it, so I thought I'd try it again.
Six books you might want to read this summer: The Antagonist by Lynn Coady – Suitably set in the summer, The Antagonist is a one-sided epistolary novel about Rank, a one-time enforcer, who is trying to set the record of his life straight. It's funny, it's heartfelt, and Rank is so fully-realized you'll almost think you've stumbled across a trove of someone's private correspondence. It's riveting. Irma Voth by Miriam Toews – The story of Irma, a mennonite living in Mexico, has a lot of elements that, now that I'm thinking about it, hearken back to the summer books I loved as a kid. It's a kind of coming-of-age story – certainly it's about discovering who you are and what you're capable of – and it's filled with Toews' signature humour and insight. It's exactly the kind of book that offers up equal parts excellent writing and entertainment, and it is not to be missed. Touch by Alexi Zentner – If you are not such a fan of the heat, perhaps you can take vicarious comfort in the dark and freezing winters Zentner evokes in his haunting, beautiful, and magical story about family legends and how thin the line between folklore and reality becomes in the dark, empty woods. It's a masterful story, beautifully told, and offers a little something different if you're a fan of the mysterious but tired of detective fiction. Up Up Up by Julie Booker – Summer reading is often done either in long leisurely chunks, or in short breaks in between lots of activities, and a short story collection is an excellent way to bridge the two. Booker's stories are especially suited to summer because many of them have to do with travel, as well as how to fill the boredom that can set in when our regular schedules are suddenly altered. It's great reading, perhaps even better because it gives you the space to pick it up and put it down guilt-free. The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright – Romance is traditional summer fare, but Enright turns things around a little by writing about a relationship that began as an affair, told from the perspective of Gina, one of the lovers. I've written quite a lot about it already, but suffice to say, it is a gorgeously constructed novel and will more than hold your attention wherever you engage in your summer reading. The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock – Non-fiction doesn't make everyone's summer reading list, but it almost always makes mine. This is an alternate to the juicy celebrity memoir, telling instead the story of an 18th century woman who invented her own art form. Truly, Mary Delaney's life story is absorbing and juicy enough to stand up on its own, that she managed to become such an incredible artist is the icing on the cake. I'm tempted to point this book toward gardeners especially, since Delaney's art was the immaculate recreation of flowers out of paper, but really it's the kind of intricate and inspiring story that would capture the attention and imagination of almost any reader.
Five books I'll be reading: Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach The Water Rat of Wanchai by Ian Hamilton The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (Obviously I will be reading more books than this, but these are at the top of my list.)
So, there you go. What would you recommend people read this summer? What do you plan to read? And, perhaps most importantly, where do you plan to read your books and does that affect what they are? (For example, I try not to take hardcovers to the beach so I don't get sand in the spine, but maybe that's just me?)
It's strange how, sometimes, a book you really want to talk about leaves you without the words to do so. Certainly there are books that leave you so shellshocked that the very idea of starting a new one seems crass and somehow inappropriate. It's too soon, you think. At the opposite end are those books most often referred to as "beach reads," which hold you in their thrall until the last page, at which point you toss them aside and pick up another, typically only remembering their finer plot points when walking home by yourself late at night (assuming, of course, that your beach reads are terrifying, which mine almost always seem to be). There are, I'm sure, lots of kinds of books in between these two extremes, but the two I most often seem to encounter are books I can't stop talking about, and books I want very much to talk about but can't manage to do in a sensible way. Even that sentence borders on what I'm talking about. It's as if you want your words to be so precise, to do the book justice, but in the face of this author you feel yourself unworthy. Bare with me, because this is how I feel in the face of Lisa Moore, and most recently about her short story collection Open.
Open is so hard for me to talk about, I think, because Moore's style is so distinct, and her characters so full, that it's very hard to step away and shake your head clear in order to engage in any kind of critical thinking. The layered descriptions, the scraps of memories, the various characters, all continue to play through your imagination long after you've finished reading. This is something I love about Moore's writing, but also something that frustrates me. The through-line that binds the stories in Open together is relationships. In each story, a relationship – and often more than one, with friendships balanced against marriages – is in flux; in all the stories, characters' memories are overlaid with their present circumstances, which creates a swirl of images that can at times be disorienting for both the character and the reader.
As the world gets smaller, it seems that of all things, Everest is what gets closer. I know a disproportionate number of people who have been to the Everest base camp. When I was in Nepal volunteering a few years ago, a helicopter ride around Everest was a fairly common tourist activity, if an expensive one (I did not to it). Beyond base camp, though, it seems to be more a matter of money than one of skill to actually climb the mountain. Since the last Everest tragedy, numerous reports have come out from experienced climbers who have watched as first-timers have used oxygen the entire way up, or are learning to belay (a fairly basic technique) on the upper slopes. The reality of Everest today loomed large for me while I read Tanis Rideout's debut novel Above All Things, in part because her ability to carve out the historical grandeur of Everest is all the more impressive for its modern ubiquity.
Above All Things is the story of George Mallory's third and final Everest attempt in 1924, and Rideout divides the narrative between the mountain, moving between George's perspective and that of young climber Sandy Irvine, and England, where George's wife Ruth waits for news. The division is beautifully done, and allows Rideout to maintain the tension and suspense of the climb while providing different insights in what was at stake as well as rounder perspective on George Mallory himself. That being said, Ruth's presence in the novel is not simply to serve as a vessel for facts about her husband: she is as deep and broad a character as he is.
I was never a Seinfeld superfan, but it is pretty much impossible to avoid the show, so I've probably seen close to two-thirds of the episodes. There are lots of funny moments and quotable lines, but one of my favourites is George Costanza's fear about his worlds colliding. This is usually only a concern if you're a different version of yourself at work than you are at home (or whatever), and to be honest, I embrace it when my worlds collide, because it's too much work to keep things separate. In this case, I suppose it's my blog worlds that are colliding. In addition to Books Under Skin, which I've been maintaining for nearly three years, I also have a more traditional life-y blog (mostly about knitting, but also cooking, travel, etc.). I have no plans to merge these blogs (or start reviewing pattern books), but a book did recently cross my desk that fit both blogs too well to pass up. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's All Wound Up is a collection of memoir-style short stories, wonderfully written and thoughtfully organized, and largely about knitting.
It's a bit niche, I'll admit, but All Wound Up is hilarious, and since much of the stories Pearl-McPhee tells involve her adventures parenting three teenage daughters (something my parents would relate well to, I suspect), you absolutely do not have to be a knitter to enjoy her work. I often read books about cultures, places, time-periods, and professions I have no experience with, and I enjoy them very much. Those books are a way for me to engage with something I would otherwise be cut off from; certainly, when I read a book set in a town or city I know well, I feel a different connection to it than I would if it were set somewhere I've never been, but in both cases, if the writing is good and the story is compelling, that added knowledge is just a bonus, not a necessity. So it is with All Wound Up, which made me laugh a lot – sometimes with the half-guilty laugh that comes when you recognize yourself in a situation, but more often because Pearl-McPhee can somehow make everything seem fresh and funny, and do so without being in the least bit mean-spirited.
Generally speaking, when I start reading a book, I keep going until I finish it. Lately, I've had the excellent luck to pick up one good book after another, but it doesn't always go like that. Like most avid readers, the sheer number of books I read means every once in a while I'm going to get a dud. For some reason, I don't like with the characters, I don't care about the plot, or whatever. It happens to everyone. For a lot of people I know, if they aren't hooked by a certain point, they stop reading; there are too many good books out there, they reason, to keep going with one that isn't keeping them up at night. Fair enough. I, though, usually stick it out. I have faith that something is going to happen (someone saw something in the book to make it worth publishing), so I plow on, and sometimes I'm rewarded and sometimes I'm disappointed, but very rarely are unfinished books left in my wake. Somehow, though, a really good one was. For the life of my, I cannot remember why I left Miriam Toews' A Complicated Kindness after only a dozen pages – I was probably distracted by something else – but I am so glad I picked it back up, because my goodness what a wrenching, funny, hoot of a book it is.
A Complicated Kindness is the story of Nomi Nickel, a teenage Mennonite living in East Village Manitoba in the late-'70s/early-'80s, I would guess. Half of Nomi's family – the better looking half, according to her – are gone, which leaves just her and her dad, Ray. Her mother, Trudie, has been gone for a while, and her older sister Tash left before that. Their whereabouts is a mystery, which leaves all possibilities open to Nomi's imagination. Ray is quiet, religious, and affectionate in a buttoned-up sort of way. He writes Nomi notes suggesting she go to school that day, he appreciates her system of cooking dinner based on an alphabet system (m-day might mean macaroni, or meat, or mushrooms, or whatever). Nomi runs wild.
Not that long ago there was an interesting discussion on Twitter about how (or if) knowledge and experience with the setting of a novel affected the way you connect with the story being told. (If you aren't on Twitter and this seems to go against everything you've heard about the medium, let me just say that it all depends on who you interact with and that, yes, there are a lot of interesting literary discussions being hashed out in 140-character bites.) Personally, I love finding a book that's set somewhere I'm familiar with. Reading Ami McKay's The Birth House, for example, was a thrill partially because it's set in my home town (albeit nearly 100 years before I lived there). Likewise, as I become more comfortable with the idea that I now live in Toronto, books set in neighbourhoods I'm familiar with pop out at me in way they perhaps would not have five years ago. Nonetheless, the geography of a novel is, in some ways, incidental to whether or not I'll enjoy it, because even if I'm reading about somewhere I'm familiar with, I'm still experiencing it through the eyes and emotions of a fictional character, which means, in a way, that my experience doesn't matter. I had to remind myself of this a few times while reading Grace O'Connell's gorgeous debut novel Magnified World, though, because not only do her descriptions mimic the way I remember certain places, but her character Maggie feels wonderfully familiar, as if I've bumped into her before.
Magnified World is set, since we're on the subject, mostly in Toronto's West Queen West/Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood. Queen Street, certainly, figures into the story a lot, as does College Street and Kensington Market. If you are familiar with these places, reading O'Connell's descriptions offers a warm buzz of recognition; if you aren't, though, be assured that this is not an insider's look at Toronto: the descriptions are vivid and accurate in the way that lets you unconsciously map out a character's movements, without feeling overwhelmed by comings and goings. It's my favourite way to read about cities, really – detailed without becoming clinical.
I don't think I ever realized it before, but reading a hardcover vs. a softcover really changes the way I read a book. In large part, I think this is because I do most of my reading during my commute, and therefore tend to take off the dust jacket so it doesn't get ruined. This strips a hardcover of most of its distinguishing characteristics, including its cover design, plot synopsis, blurbs and little author bio. If I take the dust jacket off before I've properly read all of this, and before I've started the book, then I end up starting to read blind, with no pointers as to what's coming in the story or biographical clues as to the narrative. Usually I have a pretty good idea of what a book is going to be about, and then in suspenseful moments I can return to the blurbs to reassure myself. When reading Vincent Lam's The Headmaster's Wager, though, all I had were bright red covers and a black spine to turn to when the intensity shot up, forcing me to catch my breath and return to the story without any idea whether things were going to be okay or not.
The Headmaster's Wager is set in Vietnam, beginning right around the beginning of the Vietnam War. I think it would be impossible to live in the West and not have had your notions of the war consist mainly of images from American movies (my formative ideas about it come, I'm sorry to say, from Forest Gump). Lam, however, positions you on the other side of the conflict; not with the Viet Cong, but with a Chinese immigrant living in Saigon. Headmaster Percival Chen runs an English academy, and although many of his students go on to work with the Americans, he is unconcerned about the war, and actively works to learn nothing about what's going on. He is Chinese, the war is about Vietnam, thus, it does not concern him. This nationalistic streak proves dangerous, however, when the government decrees that all schools must teach Vietnamese. Percival refuses, both on principle and because he is trying to demonstrate his Chinese pride to his son Dai Jai. This small act, coming right at the beginning of the novel, becomes the fulcrum for everything that follows – a small act of defiance that changes everything.
When we were kids, my sisters and I devoured Archie comics. We literally had bags of them. People gave them to us as gifts, my mum would buy old ones at flea markets – we had hundreds. We read enough of them that now we can refer to specific Archie adventures when playing games like Taboo and not have it seem obscure. Eventually, though, we started running into more and more reprints and began to grow out of Riverdale. Archie is kind of a gateway comic, I guess, and after years of reading about his friends I moved on to Gary Larson's Far Side comics. After I got through those (probably around Grade 6) I didn't really read any comics (besides the ones in the newspaper) until I discovered webcomics a few years ago. Of those, Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant was one of my most favourite, and when she put out a book last year I was thrilled.
I am making the distinction here between comics and graphic novels, because Beaton's pieces are comics in the sense that they're written in strips. She has some recurring characters, and often does several strips on a particular theme, but her book is much like Larson's in that you can open it at random. Even reading it cover to cover is a little like opening at random, since you can go from several comics about Lester B. Pearson, to a few pages about "sexy Batman," and on to a strip about Queen Elizabeth at Tillbury. Clearly, Hark! A Vagrant is a little different.
I do most of my reading on my commute, which is long enough that I can generally read a book a week without breaking a sweat. To get to work (and then get home again) I take a streetcar, a subway, and a bus – the holy trinity of Toronto transportation. It can be tempting, sometimes, to complain about how long it takes, or how many transfers I have to make, or how I pretty much never get a seat, but really, it's an hour and half of designated reading time, and how can I complain about that? Sometimes people approach me to ask about what I'm reading – how I like a certain book, whether I would recommend it, how I found it, etc. – and I often glance up from the page to scope out what else is being read in the vicinity. Clearly, I am not the only one who does this, although, unlike Julie Wilson in her new book Seen Reading, I've never kept good enough notes to construct lives for my fellow transit readers.
Seen Reading is a book of microfiction – think one-page short stories – that is entirely inspired by the readers Wilson encounters on her own Toronto commute. She takes notes of the reader's gender and appearance, what book they're reading, and what page they're on, and then uses these details to build a small story, sometimes with a clear connection to something about their appearance and book choice, sometimes not. As a premise, it's gold, but in lesser hands this slim collection of stories would fall flat, or become repetitive. It's a definite testament to Wilson's imagination and the constraints of a one-page story that make Seen Reading an engrossing little collection.
