Over rated authors

I have to agree with this list of over rated Canadian authors - with perhaps one exception. I have to admit that I haven't read some of their recent work but that makes the point doesn't it? Mostly I didn't even care for the first book by them that I read!

The one exception is Douglas Coupland - I haven't read anything by him, at least I don't think so, so I can't comment. To be fair I should except Erin Moure too as I haven't read any of her work either but I am assuming as she is a poet I wouldn't like her fiction at all as I disliked both Anne Michaels and Ondaatje's stuff for letting their bad poetry overwhelm what might have been a good story. Not surprisingly those two authors are also on the list. I applaud wholeheartedly these assessments by Good and Beattie:
Of Anne Michaels - Stuffed to the gills with abstruse metaphoric language and self-conscious, sonorous prose, Fugitive Pieces and its ever-so-slightly less overwrought follow-up, The Winter Vault, are prime examples of Canadian fiction that is solipsistic, humourless, and alienating.

And of Erin Moure - She also demonstrates why people have taken to avoiding poetry so studiously. Cryptic without being particularly interesting, stricken with various political and linguistic theories, and barren of the sort of grace one typically looks to poetry to provide, it’s all too easy to take a pass on.

And of Ondaatje - our very own poet laureate of pretentious, purple prose, our king of cliché, a sorcerer who has improbably managed for decades now to pass off his distinctive brand of inert slop as somehow being possessed of a “literary” value only detectable by prize juries, time-serving academics, and a handful of supine reviewers.

Right on the money I say. Modern poetry is, in my view, like recent modern art - especially performance art - mostly a fraud foisted on a fawning and sheeplike public. But back to the list. What about the others?

Ralston Saul. He'd be at the top of my list if only for his very sloppy habit of not bothering to credit his sources. No wonder the reviewers describe his recent work as increasingly vague, unconvincing, and repetitive exercises in nationalist myth-making. I don't even agree that Unconscious Civilization deserved the compliment they saw fit to award him. I refuse to waste time on him.

Jane Urquhart. I read a couple of her books because they were on my book club list but would not recommend them. Have to say yes to this conclusion- like many of the writers here, would do well to bear in mind Ray Robertson’s admonition about “the literary value of not being boring.”

David Adams Richards - I liked the books I have read by Richards which is an improvement over the others so I am not sure whether his recent stuff has deteriorated, as they imply, into formulaic rants.
The result has been a strident series of crude, reactionary harangues on the evils of modern, secular civilization. Degenerate city-dwellers, slanderous hypocrites, and anyone with a university education are lined up against God’s people – honest, stalwart, hard-working folk who are made to suffer the persecutions of the saints. Enough already.

Hey, that sounds like me so maybe I should pick his latest one up!

Joseph Boyden - Here's another of the recent "star" authors who fails to sufficiently credit sources. If one is attempting historical fiction one should at least have a bibliography that inspired and informed the work. Perhaps that explains Good and Beattie's reaction -
And did no one notice that the Manhattan sections of Through Black Spruce read as if the author had researched them by watching reruns of America’s Next Top Model?

The reviewers don't suggest there is an order to the list so the fact that Vassanji and Martel are both near the bottom may not mean they are less over-rated than the others in their eyes. I didn't dislike The In between World of Vikram Lall but it is true I didn't like it enough to want to buy another Vassanji book. Perhaps his earlier ones were better but Good and Beattie have nothing positive at all to say about him. At least they applaud Martel's Life of Pi but in a back handed way as they point out that its premise owes more than a little to Brazilian writer Moacyr Scilar’s comic novel Max and the Cats (Martel may be the first institutional CanLit star of the Internet generation, where the line between appropriation and plagiarism is perilously blurry). Had I realised how much he owed to Scilar I might not have liked that book so well. I absolutely hate authors being lazy or (worse) deceptive about giving credit where credit is due (have you noticed?)

I would add a name to this list. Our reviewers were bold but not brave enough to list Margaret Atwood. Here is an author who is clearly resting on her laurels. I have stopped not only buying but even reading her recent over written efforts. She could use a darn good editor but I doubt there are any who would beard this lion of Can Lit. She will have her way and it doesn't do her work any good. I would take a hacksaw to it and prune several of her novels down to what would probably amount to novellas.

You have to eat eggs on the road

I like books about writers, written by writers, about their journey, usually to some kind of success. I always think I might gain some magic insight from them which would help me get to the next level in my writing.

A writer's road isn't easy as we writers, or wannabe writers, know. It is full of potholes, narrow bridges and detours. There are times when we are motivated, times when we are devoid of ideas, times when we close our laptop and swear never to write another word. But how many of us have dreamed of being discovered? Wished we could have a helping hand up over those hurdles? Wouldn't you give your eye teeth to have your work noticed by a published author and be drawn into his circle, recommended to his publisher? It didn't work out well, it appears, for Tom Grimes. Except in the end he has a book out of the drama - Mentor.

This is a book about striding up to the brink of success, only to have success disembowel you with a dull steak knife, bow, and then skip away, cackling.

Does that description from the NY Times appeal? It sounds rather disheartening. Does it have something to offer to budding writers, if only as a warning?

Mr. Grimes admits: “I imitated authors. On Monday, I sounded like Vonnegut, who, on Tuesday, became Nabokov, who, on Wednesday, became Toni Morrison, who, on Thursday, became Philip Roth.”

I ask myself - could I ever sound like Vonnegut? Who would even try? And then it seems the book probably tells you more than you want to know about the book world.

Alongside his own downward-spiraling narrative, Mr. Grimes packs this story with book world gossip, the way you stud a leg of lamb with garlic before sticking it in the oven. At one point Mailer gives Mr. Grimes some macho, if baffling, book tour advice: “You have to eat eggs on the road.”

He tells the story of being invited to a cocktail party at the home of L. Rust Hills, the influential former literary editor at Esquire. Mr. Hills pulls him aside and offers him a quid pro quo. “So, you teach my book” — a volume called “Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular” — “and I read your stuff,” Mr. Hills says. “O.K.? That’s how it works. Make sense?"

That's rather sordid and not exactly what you imagine when you have a manuscript you are proud of. So maybe I will give this writer's book a pass. That is the advice of the NY Times reviewer, the would be writer in my life being ME!

Don’t give this forthright and bewildered book to the would-be writer in your life. It might make him or her climb a tall tree and leap from it. You don’t need that on your hands. In any case, I suspect many aspiring writers will find it on their own, and read it between the cracks in their fingers.

Or will I get tempted anyway and read it cringing?

E books coming to libraries

I have a friend who thinks books are passe. I am not of the same mind as I believe there will always be books in some form or another. Books have changed quite a lot since the first ones; technology is about to change the format again now that e-books are here. And libraries want to keep up.

The New Brunswick public libraries are planning to start offering e-books in the next few months to allow people access to more reading material in different formats.

There are more than two million library books in the various public libraries across the province, but the collection could jump a lot higher once e-books become available.

Tina Bourgeois, the regional director for libraries in the Albert-Westmorland-Kent Region, said people would eventually be able to download e-books from their home computer instead of visiting their local library branches.

Not sure exactly how that would work and neither do they yet.

Bourgeois said the libraries are getting more and more requests from patrons for e-books.

"Patrons will be go on and check them out and reserve them, if they are already checked out, like they can with any print material," she said.

Bourgeois said there are a lot of details still to work out on what can be offered and how people will be able to access it but she wants to make electronic books just as accessible as regular books.

When will Nova Scotia libraries get started on this I wonder.

Another library, sort of

As an addendum to our last post on wonderful libraries we have to add this one, which is not exactly a library but a Library Parking Garage in Kansas City, Missouri. Not in the same class as the old library interiors but still extraordinary. Note the titles of the books chosen, which are easier to read in the second view.

Those shown in the photo - from left to right -Tao Ie Ching by Lao Tsu, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughs, Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, A Green book which I can't make out, Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, Charlotte's Web by E. B. White, Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, and Truman by David McCullough. There are apparently 11 more on the streetside "shelf" to the left of the steps in the photo above.

The book spines, wich measure approximately 25 by 9 feet, are made of signboard mylar. The shelf showcases 22 titles reflecting a wide variety of reading interests as suggested by Kansas City readers and then selected by the Kansas City Library Board of Trustees.

For Librophiles

Here is a wonderful site that appeals to several of my (too many) interests.

Since I am trained as a Librarian and love books, and also have an interest in history, how could I not be intrigued by this post on Beautiful libraries which I came across a little while ago. It has taken me a while to get around to sharing it.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to do a grand tour of even some of these? My hat goes off to the intrepid compiler who gathered these photos, and the readers who suggested more. It's nice to see that the Parliamentary Library in Ottawa and the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library made the grade.
I've been asking myself which I would pick as a favorite to visit if I was given an opportunity to. It's a difficult choice. I have already been to "The Long Room" at Trinity College Dublin, where they keep ( or used to ) The Book of Kells, and also the National Library of Ireland in Dublin so I could cross those off but as for the others, how would I choose? So I guess I won't, but I have to say I am partial to the ones with added art; the painted ceilings are wonderful although it might be distracting to read there! The Vatican Library is almost visually overwhelming.

At the end of this "curious expedition" into old libraries are some links to other sites on libraries and some excellent book suggestions. One that appeals is mentioned in the comments: The Library of Babel, by Jorge Luis Borges which is apparently out of print and not cheap second hand.

More...The Library of Babel is one of Borges' finest short fictions -- a meditation on the possible, the infinite, the nature of hope and the creation of meaning. The Library contains all possible books, all possible combinations of the 25 orthographic symbols in all possible languages, and therefore everything man is capable of knowing and expressing -- but it appears to have no order, no organization. It contains the true catalogue of the Library, as well as innumerable false catalogues, books proving the falsity of the false catalogue, and books proving the falsity of the true catalogue. Yet from chaos arises meaning: There is no combination of characters one can make . . . that the divine Library has not foreseen and that in one or more of its secret tongues does not hide a terrible significance. There is no syllable one can speak that is not filled with tenderness and terror, that is not, in one of those languages, the mighty name of a god

That intrigues. I'll have to watch for it at the annual book sale. Borges was once director of the Argentine National Library, something I didn't know until now, so I have learned much on my curious expedition. And this site offers many others!

Ernest Buckler

"Writing is regarded as at most a harmless eccentricity, like an abnormal appetite for marsh greens."

I liked this quotation of Ernest Buckler's which I read on this short bio of this Nova Scotian author from the NS archives for the 25th anniversary of his death .

I'm embarrassed to say I haven't read one book by Ernest Buckler. I would say his work isn't well known at all although he is described as a " one of Canada's pre-eminent authors of the time." This article made me want to read more of his work and I was able to satisfy some of that urge immediately on the NS archives site as it has, among the other documents from the archives on him, an article he wrote which was published in The Atlantic Advocate in 1962 entitled "Bestsellers make strange bedfellows,." It is a time capsule of sorts, a view of what was "popular" reading at the time, as Buckler points out, a very eclectic mixture of the silly and the sublime - "...baffling incongruities abound!" - and his consideration of what common factors if any combined to rack up sales.
"All this seems to prove that, in novels at least, subject matter is not the big thing in making a best seller, " And "It is a mistake to suppose that sex by itself can make best sellers ..." and "...it is simply not true that excellence is inevitable poison at the box office.."

He seems to think advertising made little difference, at least if the book was without merit. I am not sure I would agree with him on that point but perhaps it was true in the sixties. He did admit that once a book had reached "best seller status", readers wanting to read what everyone else was reading tended to "perpetuate its tenure there." But what gets the book to the top in the first place? The title? The author's name? He comes in the end to the conclusion that the book has to have "personality" , an intangible quality akin to a person's which intrigues. He ends with a touch of humour telling the story of a reader who wrote him to praise his book for its "good clear print."

The short story "The Line Fence" published in the magazine Better Farming in 1955 promised better reading but unfortunately the site only offers the first few paragraphs! Later in the set of documents shown however is a newspaper photograph of Buckler at a reception where he received the Order of Canada and which includes a picture of Miss Evelyn Garbary of Wolfville.

I guess I should head down to the library to see if they have a copy of The Mountain and the Valley.

Proverbs

The NY Times has a little section which I often enjoy reading -

Schott's Vocab

Schott’s Vocab is a repository of unconsidered lexicographical trifles — some serious, others frivolous, some neologized, others newly newsworthy. Each day, Schott's Vocab explores news sites around the world to find words and phrases that encapsulate the times in which we live or shed light on a story of note. If language is the archives of history, as Emerson believed, then Schott’s Vocab is an attempt to index those archives on the fly.

This week Ben Schott has a Proverb contest which would be fun to think about. The challenge is to take a traditonal proverb and update it for modern times, or make up a completely new one, with reference if possible to current events. He gives a few examples to get us going :

A Rolling Stone gathers Kate Moss.
Actions speak louder than tweets.
Where there’s a will there’s a lawyer.
If you can’t stand the heat, get as far away from Gordon Ramsay as you can.

Readers have already offered some good ones. Not sure which is my favorite. Perhaps "Don't put all your nest-eggs in one basket."

If I come up with one of my own I'll add it. I'm going away to put my thinking cap on.

For grammar grumps

I have my pet peeves when it comes to grammar and punctuation. I am a fan of Lynne Truss and I have passed on my enthusiasm to our daughter. She has been know to use "The Panda says no" stickers when she sees a misplaced apostrophe. But I have to admit I am sloppy sometimes in my writing and I am always willing to improve so I found the NY Times article, Tangled Passages, on some points of "grammar, usage and style" of interest. The author (Phillip E. Corbett) gives several examples of confusing style. I think avoiding this is so instinctual that good writers don't even notice. I don't agree in some ways about the long sentences with phrases. Perhaps it is not the best style for newspaper articles but sometimes longer sentences with complex phrasing can be quite understandable to a well read person. I do agree with him about having too many commas. I like to use them only when they are absolutely needed; as a result I probably use them too little. He makes some good points about hyphens being used inappropriately.

Mr. Rattner and other government officials have repeatedly said they have no interest in running the company day-to-day.

If the phrase were used as a modifier before a noun — “day-to-day operations” — then we’d use hyphens, as in “door-to-door” above. They hold the modifier together and make it easier to read. But in an adverbial phrase like this after the verb, there’s no need.

He gives other examples of bad style, some nice reminders to keep our writing neat and tidy.

Libraries raised me

I was quite a science fiction fan in my youth. I still love science stories and Sci Fi movies, and although I don't read as much science fiction as I used to, Ray Bradbury's name in an article can still attract my attention, especially when it is in connection to libraries.

...among Mr. Bradbury’s passions, none burn quite as hot as his lifelong enthusiasm for halls of books. His most famous novel, “Fahrenheit 451,” which concerns book burning, was written on a pay typewriter in the basement of the University of California, Los Angeles library; his novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes” contains a seminal library scene. Mr. Bradbury frequently speaks at libraries across the state, and on Saturday he will make his way here for a benefit for the H. P. Wright Library, which like many others in the state’s public system is in danger of shutting its doors because of budget cuts.

Pretty good for a guy who is 90!

“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

And he was probably better read than most college students then and certainly of today!

Anyway, he is going to try to help raise money for a library to cover a shortfall dues to property tax decreases. I look forward to the day when Margaret Atwood will be doing the same.

Mr. Bradbury is not fond of the internet, which is surprising, given his scientific bent; he thinks it a distraction from gaining real knowledge. Maybe he is right.

Fiscal threats to libraries deeply unnerve Mr. Bradbury, who spends as much time as he can talking to children in libraries and encouraging them to read.

The Internet? Don’t get him started. “The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles, which is jammed with enormous stuffed animals, videos, DVDs, wooden toys, photographs and books, with things like the National Medal of Arts sort of tossed on a table.

“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’

“It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

That's not what they tell us. They tell us that once it's out there in cyberspace you can't get it back. Hard to burn anyway which is how many libraries were lost. But that's neither here nor there; we applaud Mr. Bradbury's spirit and his continuing support for literature, books and libraries.

When he is not raising money for libraries, Mr. Bradbury still writes for a few hours every morning (“I can’t tell you,” is the answer to any questions on his latest book); reads George Bernard Shaw; receives visitors including reporters, filmmakers, friends and children of friends; and watches movies on his giant flat-screen television.

He can still be found regularly at the Los Angeles Public Library branch in Koreatown, which he visited often as a teenager.

“The children ask me, ‘How can I live forever, too?’ ” he said. “I tell them do what you love and love what you do. That’s the story on my life.”

Jane Austen atwitter

As my friends and family, and perhaps my few readers here might know, I am a Jane Austen fan. My daughter is perhaps following in my footsteps; she came across a cute and funny piece and posted the link on her facebook page. It is Pride and Prejudice played out as if the characters had twitter and blog technology. You perhaps have to be at least slightly familiar with twitter to appreciate the humour fully but if you are familiar with the plot and characters of Pride and Prejudice you will still "get" the joke. I'll copy an excerpt and if you like it you can read down to
LizzieB: @Darcy I heart you. Truly.
And don't neglect the music links!


MrsB:
A Mr Bingley--worth 50,000 followers a year--has joined Twitter! He's brought a friend, Mr Darcy--worth 100,000 followers a year! Pls RT

MrsB:
@JaneB @LizzyB @MaryBsaphorisms @KittyB @LydiaB I will have one of you girls married into internet fame yet. Just you wait.

LizzyB:
@MrsB But mother, I think we can pull ourselves up by our dooce-straps just fine.

MrsB:
Blogcasting: How to find husbands for your daughters: http://tinyurl/momblog Now with free giveaway from our Etsy embroidery shop. Pls RT

LizzieB:
@JaneB If I could love a man who would love me enough to take me for a mere 50 followers, I should be well pleased...
JaneB:
Oh @LizzyB, it is my ardent wish to marry 4 love. Love, respect AND dual laptops would be most agreeable. #iamdullbutpretty

CubicleSurfer:
Does anyone know what #Bingley is and why it’s suddenly the no. 1 trending topic?

BoredInTheBurbs:
@CubicleSurfer I think #Bingley’s a he and I’m pretty sure he just died.

POPlovesPOP:
@CubicleSurfer @BoredInTheBurbs No, I’m pretty sure #Bingley’s the new Idol. That doesn’t explain why he’s the no. 1 trending topic, tho.

MaryBsAphorisims:
It behooves us all to resist the temptation of #Idol chatter

MaryBsAphorisims:
I can’t believe I lost 5 followers with that last Tweet. What’s WRONG with you people?

LydiaB:
@JaneB @LizzyB @MaryBsaphorisms @KittyB There's going to be a dance!!! Squeeee!!! I won't sit down all night.


Read the rest- click here

Book sale books

You can tell a lot about a person by the books they read. Today we went to buy books at the giant book sale which a local group holds every year, raising money which is put to good use in the community. The bargains are real and I always come away with a big bag full, but I can't buy everything - as much as I might like to- and I do have to make choices. The ones I picked out say something about me and my interests at the moment, so I thought I might list them, with a few comments, for the pitifully few readers of this blog.

The first section I was able to get to through the throngs of eager buyers was the spiritual life section. This is always of interest to me, even more so as I age, it seems. I always wish however, that I had thought to write down a few authors in particular that I value, as there is a wide range always in the quality of books offered and I often feel that those which are really worth reading don't get given away for resale. In the past I have picked up books which appeared interesting but which turned out to be patent nonsense disguised as spiritual guidance or inspiration. Nevertheless I was fortunate this time to spot a book by G.K Chesterton, Heretics/Orthodoxy in a nice hardcover copy ( 2000 reprint edition) which looked almost new. Actually this volume is two books in one as it combines his book Heretics, with his response to critics who said it only told one side of the story. A pretty good buy for $4 .

I turned then to the paperback fiction table which had cleared enough to let me browse there. I was going to be very picky here as I already have quite a few fiction books at home which I haven't got around to reading. I am less interested than I was in fiction as lately non-fiction or biography appeals more to me. But one title intrigued me- Cathedral of the Black Madonna by Jean Markale. I thought it was a mystery at first as the sub-title was The Druids and the Mysteries of Chartres. Perhaps the book sale organisers made the same mistake as it really should have been on the non-fiction table. It is a book, in modern soft cover, about the famous and beautiful French Cathedral - its history, its construction, and its images of the virgin including the "Black Madonna". This combination of history, mystery and religiosity was irresistable. Another $4.

I'm not sure where I found The Overloaded Ark by Gerald Durrell. There usually is a nature section but I think it was again in the paperback fiction section. I love Gerald Durrell's books and so does my daughter and we already have most of his work. But I didn't recognise this one. It is an old Penguin paperback edition with yellowing pages but for $2 I figured worth picking up. Now that my daughter is thousands of kms away we will have to fight over these books anyway so a second copy will not go amiss. I've already started reading it and I am again charmed by Durrell's vivid descriptions of both scenery and animals, and the deft humour he peppers his narrative with. Oh, to write like Gerald Durrell.

At the Biography table, miracle of miracles, I found Merton, A Biography, by Monica Furlong. I had just been thinking about her the other day and said to myself " I really should find one of her books to read", and here one was as if in answer to an unspoken prayer. Furlong was one of the best religious writers in the UK and a fervant activist in the Church of England. And had I had a choice of only one of her books, the biography of Merton would probably have been my pick. A nice hard copy edition with slip cover for another $4

It pays one to go round the sale room several times, wending your way past the other browsers, so on one of my circuits I found myself back again at the paperback fiction section, and here I picked up Joanna Trollope's Brother and Sister for $3. She is an author who I enjoy and I had not read this one. Friends of mine, just the other evening, were praising The Choir which was a BBC mini-series based on one of her books. I wish I could have also found that book but I hope to get a hold of a dvd copy of the series to watch somehow.

So, for a grand total of $17 I have a wealth of good reading which should keep me busy for a few months at least.

Toxic books?

Is this for real? It is hard to believe there are people in government who have so little sense of proportion. Have the environmental protection people been smoking something that has addled their brains? They want to ban old books because of minute, and we mean very minute, quantities of lead in old illustrations.

... under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.

Because so many children will chew pages from old books.

The problem is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), passed by Congress last summer after the panic over lead paint on toys from China. Among its other provisions, CPSIA imposed tough new limits on lead in any products intended for use by children aged 12 or under, and made those limits retroactive:

And they aren't talking 1885- they are talking 1985!

A further question is what to do about public libraries, which daily expose children under 12 to pre-1985 editions of Anne of Green Gables, Beatrix Potter, Baden-Powell’s scouting guides, and other deadly hazards. The blogger Design Loft carefully examines some of the costs of CPSIA-proofing pre-1985 library holdings; they are, not surprisingly, utterly prohibitive. The American Library Association spent months warning about the law’s implications, but its concerns fell on deaf ears in Congress (which, in this week’s stimulus bill, refused to consider an amendment by Republican senator Jim DeMint to reform CPSIA). The ALA now apparently intends to take the position that the law does not apply to libraries unless it hears otherwise. One can hardly blame it for this stance, but it’s far from clear that it will prevail.

Aren't there people paid to think of the ramifications of such laws and to suggest reasonable exceptions to laws like this? This is the kind of legislation which makes one agree with Bumble:

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”“

Can we hope and pray that Canada does not fall victim to such foolishness and retains some common sense? But we are prone to such government meddling here as well. The future does not look pretty.

Whatever the future of new media may hold, ours will be a poorer world if we begin to lose (or “sequester” from children) the millions of books published before our own era. They serve as a path into history, literature, and imagination for kids everywhere. They link the generations by enabling parents to pass on the stories and discoveries in which they delighted as children. Their illustrations open up worlds far removed from what kids are likely to see on the video or TV screen. Could we really be on the verge of losing all of this? And if this is what government protection of our kids means, shouldn’t we be thinking instead about protecting our kids from the government?

Art is long

" Life is short but Art is long" - as some ancient Greek said once. This has been taken many ways but one way of looking at the meaning is that while a man (or woman- I am not being sexist here) dies, his art (skill, knowledge) can live on beyond him and others build on the work of those before.

The artist Wyeth died the other day:

The son of famed painter and book illustrator N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth gained wealth, acclaim and tremendous popularity. But he chafed under criticism from some experts who regarded him as a facile realist, not an artist but merely an illustrator.


He is not the first artist who is looked down upon because a) he is a realist and b) he is popular.

Some critics dismissed Wyeth's art as that of a mere “regionalist.” Art critic Hilton Kramer was even more direct, once saying, “In my opinion, he can't paint.”

The late J. Carter Brown, who was for many years director of the National Gallery, called such talk “a knee-jerk reaction among intellectuals in this country that if it's popular, it can't be good.”

I can think of Canadian instances- Bateman and Danby for example. Colville may have escaped the sneer but there is this bias, especially recently, for more modern, experiential stuff.

Like this Montreal exhibit which I read about in the Globe and Mail yesterday morning, the same day as the article on Wyeth.

It's one of the few times passing gas in a public presentation probably got murmurs and nods of approval from anybody but the most sophomoric.

But Cloaca No. 5, a mechanized sculpture that reproduces the human digestive system in every stomach-churning detail, gave a little hiss and launched a nose-wrinkling sulphuric barrage a few times yesterday as creator Wim Delvoye explained his creative process.

Cloaca, a towering steel, rubber and glass contraption, is fed twice a day with cafeteria leftovers during the exhibit, which opened Thursday and runs until Valentine's Day at the Université du Québec's art gallery in Montreal.

It processes the food - which includes the Quebec favourite, poutine - and then poops once a day.

"Let's make a bet. Which artist's name and works will be remembered 50 years after his death?

Mr. Delvoye described Cloaca as a reflection on human identity and the creative process.

"It's about all of us," the Belgian artist said in an interview.

But is it art?

"I think it's art as long as it's in an art museum," Mr. Delvoye said. "If it's in a garage, it's an interesting machine."

The artist said he wanted to make something that was "absurdly unnecessary" and drew inspiration from Charlie Chaplin, oddball cartoonist Rube Goldberg's elaborate and goofy machines, and Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory. ...

And which one was better value for money? Wyeth's Christina's World apparently was originally bought for $1,800.

Laval resident Clemence Bernard wrote to Montreal La Presse, saying she is "revolted" by the exhibit, which she called a "waste of $35,000 of taxpayer money."

But Louise Dery, the director of the university gallery, said it was $30,000 that came out of a Canada Council fund for exchanges of contemporary art. The money is being used to cover shipping costs.

I'm going to go with Wyeth. How about you?

The Globe and Mail's Book Site

A year or so ago the Globe and Mail phoned us up to ask us to renew our subscription which we had let lapse a few years ago. We told them no thank you, there wasn't that much in it that we wanted to read except in the book section, so we only get the Globe and Mail on the weekends. Perhaps we aren't the only ones that have told them that as the G&M have revamped their book section and alleluia, they have put much of it online.

Have just taken a look at it to see if it takes our fancy. First of all we notice it has best seller lists. Handy, but only if you are aware what best seller lists represent. We don't believe for a moment that best seller lists really mean what they pretend. Instead these lists are mainly a measure of publication push - the books the publishers are promoting heavily. And the ploy often works. Still we don't mind looking at the bait with a critical eye.

Joseph Boyden seems very in right now. We see His book Through Black Spruce is on the hard cover fiction list. We read his Three Day Road a while back and although we liked it, we had this nagging feeling he borrowed a lot of his material. I'm afraid that's one of my pet peeves. When authors use material I expect the author to at least make a nod to the source. But that's an aside. On the softcover fiction list we see books by Jodi Picoult and by Khaled Husseini. I wouldn't mind reading Husseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns since The Kite Runner was so good. I've read 3 books from the non-fiction lists which seem to have books that have been around a while. Then there are Canadian lists for those who want to restrict themselves by nationality! The lists by genre are useful too. I see a couple of appealing titles on the mystery list.

But I am less interested in the lists than the reviews and other articles on the site. Having belonged to a book club for several years, I liked the profile of a Montreal Club which has been meeting for 30 years. The Globe says:

This is the first instalment in a new series in which Globe Books will shine a light on Canada's legion of book clubs.

Each month over the course of four Saturdays, we will introduce you to a new club, the book they are reading, their history and traditions, and their verdict about the book.

Gee, maybe they will do a profile of my women's reading group! If I was still in my book group I could write in and tell them which book we were reading. [Mamie take note!] They say there will be an online book club coming and a blog coming too.

Besides the articles and reviews, (they say there will be one every weekday) there are some online "ask the author" sessions lined up. One with Joseph Boyden this week (Didn't I say he was in right now?) but I am more interested in the one with P.D. James, which is scheduled for the week of Jan 24-29th. I'd ask her if it is too late for me to become an author at my age.

There is a video Blurb promoting all the bells and whistles of the site here.
I think I'll be checking in regularly.

Shakespeare?

In the Christian Science Monitor which I sometimes look into ( not often enough) there is an article by Kathryn Streeter on reading Shakespeare. She made it a 2007 New Year's Resolution to read a drama a month. It got me thinking about making a reading, and writing, resolution. Since I no longer belong to a book group it seems a good idea to put some discipline into my reading myself, or at least try to, by setting a reading goal. I don't think it will be Shakespeare, though. And as for writing, there again, I need to set myself a writing goal, otherwise the pages remain blank.

On my trip west I didn't get to write but I did read. I didn't get as much reading time as I hoped on the train trip as there was more socialising than I thought. But I finished two books both by James Lee Burke. My husband enjoys his books so I thought I would try them out. I had already read one of his books before I left, a collection of short stories, under the title Jesus Out to Sea. I found the writing good and the stories gripping so I packed a couple of his other efforts to take with me.

I finished The Tin Roof Blowdown set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and then polished off another in the Detective David Robicheaux series, written earlier, which is set before Hurricane Katrina, Pegasus Descending. Both were excellent reading, neither too light nor too heavy for reading in airports, planes and trains.

Burke is a deceptive writer, like Stephen King; his work appears to be in the action/crime/mystery genre but I find his work quite profound with a moral sense most of that ilk don't have. His settings in Louisiana are wonderfully described. You can feel the heat and the humidity and the scent of the bayous. His main protagonist David Robicheaux, a Cajun, is a flawed character and much of the action stems from his anger at the lack of justice in the world, and the baggage he carries with him from a troubled past. The plots are twisted and complex but didn't feel artificial. Burke's wide life experience shows in his novels.

I liked the books and I am set to read another in the Robicheaux series, Crusader's Cross, working backwards as it were, as this was written earlier again than the other two I read. It isn't Shakespeare but it is a start.

Books for a trip

Again I haven't posted for a long while. I have been so sporadic it is embarrassing. I can't use the excuse of my daughter's wedding any more as I did last year, but I have been busy.

I signed up for Nanowrimo again this November. I didn't win this time round but I did have a lot of fun attending two write-ins at the coffee shop downtown and I did get 15,000 words down which might be the kernel of a book some day. And I discovered Write or Die which is an invaluable aid to a tongue-tied author in training.

Now we are going to visit my daughter and son in law out west and I am planning what books to take with me. Trip books have to be of a certain type don't you think? Something which will keep me absorbed but that don't require too much deep thought. Something well written but not too mentally challenging. Mysteries are often good. Or perhaps a really interesting biography. Any suggestions? I will need, at a conservative estimate, at least 4 books for the first part of the trip since we will be 3 days on the train going through the Rockies and I can often finish a book in an afternoon. I am so looking forward to that part of the expedition. It should be relaxing and I hope to not only get some reading in but some writing as well.

I don't know if I will be able to post from the train but I may be able to post at different times along the way. That would be fun and perhaps revive the habit of getting my thoughts down here. Getting away from the busy routine of home and group responsibilities should help.

From Deborah

I look in on Deborah Gayapong's blog occasionally and this time when I did I found her promoting her new book The Defilers. It sounds like an interesting book and different than a lot of crime or mystery thrillers on the market. It also has not only a Canadian setting which you might expect from a Canadian author (these days anyway) but also a Nova Scotia setting.

One reviewer summarises the book this way:

Best New Canadian Christian Author Deborah Gyapong delivers a layered spiritual thriller told through the eyes of protagonist Linda Donner, a Mountie who finds herself entangled in a demonic murder, drug, kiddie porn drama spanning the globe. While Linda and her partner, Will, and pastor, David, fight the dark forces that have ensnared the town of South Dare, Linda must also fight her own personal demons and find a faith that was shattered years before by sexual abuse she suffered by a priest.

Fast-paced, authentic, intelligent and engaging with a satisfying ending, I would highly recommend this novel.

The plot deals difficult and unsavory subject matter but the readers who reviewed this felt she dealt with it well. Had to notice though that the fictional place in Nova Scotia is called "South Dare". The protagonist is:

posted to (fictional) Sterling County in rural Nova Scotia. There she encounters the community of South Dare, whose residents wear greasy red and green checked shirts, live in tarpaper shacks with satellite TV dishes, and are afraid of outsiders--especially the police.


Doesn't exactly paint rural NS in a good light and considering the child abuse angle ... could she have been modeling this "community" on south mountian in the Valley? Just a thought. In any case, it is a book I will be looking out for. Should be a worthwhile read.

Resurrected

Gosh, has it been so long since I posted here? Hard to believe. So much has happened. My daughter's marriage to a very nice fellow was the highlight of the past many months and perhaps explains my absence from this House of All Sorts. So much got put on hold while I planned this very special and important event.
And now a new season has started- September is new year for me- so again I will try to resurrect this space for thoughts on my reading and perhaps in the future some writing efforts which have also been put not just on the back burner but off the stove entirely!

The Kindle lights a flame.

After quite a hiatus I am back briefly. I won't be blogging much for another month either since my daughter's marriage is the end of June and I am tied up with that. BUT, I saw this and thought it deserved a post.

This morning, I decided to drop down to my local coffee establishment for a breakfast of coffee, eggs, and some morning reading. ...I had a lot of new things, and pre-coffee I’m not up to making decisions, so I just brought several things to read: Peter Kramer’s Against Depression; Marianne Williamson’s The Age of Miracles; Wayne Dyer’s Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao; and for a little more rigorous reading of Buddhism I brought The Dhammapada, D.T. Suzuki’s Manual on Zen Buddhism, Steve Hagen’s Meditation Now or Never, and Buddhism Is Not What You Think — great title, that — the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain; Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Musashi’s Book of Five Rings; a couple of novels; some books on Ruby and Python programming; the most recent issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine; Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Second Treatise of Government; John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty; Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s Sonnets; and some Larry Niven.

“What, in a wheelbarrow?” you’re thinking? No, in my Kindle. Of course, it’s only about 30 percent full.

It's an e- book and it sounds interesting. It is about the size of a pocket book and less than a pound in weight which feels about right for carrying with you in your bag. It may be a bit hard to get used to but I wouldn't mind trying. Imagine taking a whole library with you to the dentist's or doctor's office.
It will come down to content ( how much will be available) and cost. Those small amounts can add up. Still I think this might fly and I can only guess that the next generations of the device will be improved. Can you remember your first computer and how things have changed? So I agree with Charlie:

The future of these things is bright, though. First of all, the price is sure to drop; electronics always does. Soon, a lot of schools will be ordering texts that can be delivered as e-books — Metro State in Denver already does. And, as publishing is more and more divorced from the costs of physically producing the physical books, it’s sure to change the publishing industry — no more advances, but no more big barriers to publication, either.


Remember you read it here first.

The Power of Now

A friend of mine suggested I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I picked it up a while ago and had it there on my bedside stack and finally picked it up recently to read. I am glad I did. It has come at time when I am feeling a number of pressures and this book helps.

The one idea of the book, a very compelling idea, is that the past is not real - it is past and the future isn't real - it hasn't happened yet. The only reality is the present moment and yet we spend almost all our time thinking about either the past or the future and in so doing we never really ARE, never really live. The NOW, the author tells us, does not require thinking and in order to truly live we should control our thinking, our mind, instead of letting it control us. We should become a watcher, separating ourselves from our thoughts, recognising them as part of an unreal creation different from the real being we are. Our being in the now detaches us from suffering, pain, anger and brings peace and joy in life.

I have a little trouble with that subordination of the mind to feeling. I am not a feely sort of person and have a great deal of respect for a keen mind. And yet, and yet, I see the value in this idea. Easier to think about than to practice, though. That's the irony. I think about it but I am not supposed to, I am supposed to feel the present and not think so much.

Eckhart Tolle has other books which I will want to read as well but I want to reread this one first. I have to pay more attention to his practical advice, how to learn that stillness between the past and the future - the presence that removes time and "without time no suffering, no negativity can survive."
I still want to read "Winters Tale" which I read about and posted about a week or so ago. I may get to the bookstore tomorrow.