In spite of everything. . .

Sometimes you just have an Etta James moment and only belting out "At Last. . . !" at the top of your inner voice will do.

Last fall, I just couldn't stop talking ad nauseum about how much I loved Christopher Plummer's memoir, In Spite of Myself (see my list of ten reasons to read it here). But alas, the sad downside of being a book rep is that frequently one is on the road selling, and never in the same city at the same time as an author you really, really want to meet. And thus it was with me and Plummer - I was out of town and missed all of his fall events.

But he was back in Toronto this week, being interviewed onstage by his friend and fellow Canadian acting treasure Gordon Pinsent, who called Plummer's memoir, "the Hamlet of theatre autobiographies". And there I was in the front row. Plummer talked about the importance of his youth growing up in Montreal and joked about how his American editor's one piece of writing advice was to "get out of Canada as quick as you can". To her credit, however, she left all of his Canadian content in the book. It really is a marvellous read; I will treasure my signed copy.