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Check this out! Oh, this blog is so much fun. Bookshelf is devoted entirely to (of course) interesting and inventive bookcases! Thanks so much to Alexandra for passing on the link. I want them all - but this has to be my favourite. Isn't it classy?

Are you on the case? How many have you read?

The Telegraph has just complied a list of the 50 crime writers you must read before you die. Their main criteria? Crime writers who could actually write. It's a nice ecclectic mix and the panel also helpfully includes a title suggestion to start with if the author is new to you. Among the classics by Chesterton, Dickens, and Wilkie Collins, there are representatives of the Golden Age in Christie, Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh and the expected hardboiled, noirish Americans such as Hammett and Chandler. It's also nice to see Jim Thompson acknowledged; The Killer Inside Me is a terrific read. I'm likewise happy to see lesser known (but very funny) Edmund Crispin and Michael Innes make the list; their mysteries are great for bibliophiles, containing as many literary allusions as corpses. And then there are a few intriguing names that I'm unfamiliar with, but must check out. Kyril Bonfiglioli for example, whose antihero is described as having "the manner of a demented Bertie Wooster and the morals of a polecat." Or Janwilliem van der Wetering who writes about musical cops in Amsterdam. And though I've read several books by Julian Barnes and John Banville, I've never read their mystery novels written under their crime aliases Dan Kavanagh and Benjamin Black respectively. Could I have twenty snow days please?

Escaping into some great YA books

This is the time of year when I catch up on my YA reading. Since I don't sell kids books, they aren't always at the top of my priority reading list, but I help out at a couple of teachers' shows this month and want to be able to recommend and talk about as many books as I can. And good YA books always remind me of long, lazy childhood summers; nice memories to reflect on during these snowy winter days. Here are some fabulous YA novels that I've recently devoured:

Meg Rosoff is currently my favourite YA author and she is definitely one of those cross-over writers whose books could also comfortably sit in the adult fiction sections. I absolutely adored How I Live Now and her latest, What I Was, falls very much into the same rich, imaginative vein. She makes me nostalgic for all the Famous Five adventures that I read as a child, except that her writing is far more sophisticated than Blyton's. But she taps into that same sense of incredulous wonder and envy that I had back then (and still carry) for fictional kids that exude a nonchalant, mature self-sufficiency. The narrator is a 16 year old boy living miserably in a boarding school on the coast of England. One day he encounters Finn, a young teen living entirely alone in a hut by the shore and the two strike up an odd, somewhat reserved friendship. Adventures follow, mostly revolving around the ferocious and very cold sea. The two paddle out to pull in fishing nets, struggle against the incoming tides, and search for the ruins of a submerged town. Then Finn falls sick and the narrator's attempts to get help end up changing both their lives in completely unexpected ways. Rosoff is terrific at evoking the landscape and the weather of this part of England and subtly introduces a theme of ecological consciousness into the story that makes it topical without being preachy. Highly recommended for readers of both sexes, YA or adult.

Siobhan Dowd, who sadly died last year, has written two completely different kinds of novels. A Swift Pure Cry is a moving tale about Shell, a naive, motherless teenager trying to raise her siblings in rural Ireland. Then she becomes pregnant and has to hide it from her father and the town. The resulting scandal has implications not only for her own life but that of a young priest who has tried to help her. The relationship between the siblings is wonderfully written and this novel has one of the most exuberant endings I've read in a long time. Beautifully written and award winning. The paperback will be out in September.

Completely different in style and tone is The London Eye Mystery. Ted is a young autistic boy who is obsessed with anything to do with the weather. When his visiting cousin Salim expresses a wish to go up on the London Eye, Ted and his older sister Kat watch him from the ground, their eyes peeled on his pod. Only Salim never gets off. The two siblings then have to figure out how he could have disappeared and why. Ted is an original, charming creation and half the fun of this novel is getting inside his head as he uses his knowledge about weather systems to logically make sense of the world. Great fun.

Dowd still has a few new books to come that she finished before her death. The Bog Child will be available in Canada in September, but it's now out in the U.K. and you can read an early review from avid blogger, dovegreyreader here.

When I was young I always wanted a sister and my parents being extremely unobliging, I was forced to bond with fictional ones in the pages of Little Women or the "Little House" books, or Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family stories. So these next two selections were a pure delight to read.
The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall, is set in contemporary America, but has the feel of an old-fashioned, British summer tale. Four motherless sisters and their father rent a cottage for their three week vacation that is on the grounds of Arundel, a fancy mansion in the Berkshires. They become friends of the lonely boy who lives next door and end up having a series of madcap adventures. I love how Birdsall has portrayed the unique personalities of each of the sisters; the awkwardness of Rosalind the eldest, interested in a boy for the first time; Skye, the vulnerable tomboy; Jane the wistful, romantic writer with shades of Montgomery's Emily of New Moon, and Batty, the precocious four year old, who is simply adorable. These sisters have a matter-of-fact way of dealing with their predicaments that is completely refreshing. Just normal kids having good old, summer fun with nary a television set or computer in sight. The absentminded father is also very funny. I'm very much looking forward to reading the sequel, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, due out in April.

And finally there's the terrific Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters by Lesley M. Blume , just out in paperback. Cornelia is a lonely girl living in Greenwich Village whose mother is a famous concert pianist and often away on tour. She makes friends with her new eccentric neighbour Virginia, who shares her love of dictionaries and long, unusual words. Every room in Virginia's apartment is richly decorated with souvenirs from her world-wide travels with her sisters and Cornelia is enchanted by Virginia's stories, which give her the courage to break out of her shy shell and confront her distant mother. This is truly armchair (or Moroccan daybed) travel fiction for the YA reader, which will hopefully inspire them with travel and adventure dreams of their own. And you'll probably have to pull out a dictionary yourself from time to time. For fans of Chris Riddell's Ottoline series.

Lost in a classic?

Over at the blog A Different Stripe, which is written by the publishing folks at New York Review of Books, they have a post about the TV series Lost with a preview of an upcoming episode in which one of the characters is seen reading this book - The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Cesares, translated by Ruth L.C. Simms. Now, I don't watch Lost, but have seen numerous commercials for the series and so have a vague idea of what it's about. But I have read the novel and if the show is referencing it, then I think I know exactly what it's all about (and you could too!). It is also a great book to pick up during this Oscar week (the novel inspired several film-makers and the homage to the beautiful Louise Brooks on the cover is entirely intentional). It's quite short - you could mute the hours of pre-show babble and read this marvellous story instead. I won't give anything away; suffice it to say that it's set on an isolated island where strange things seem to be happening and posits, with fascinating conviction, an entirely new way to approach reality, creative or otherwise. If you have an interest in cinema, this is a must-read.
It curiously reminded me of another take on the poreous conception of reality, which is Tom McCarthy's completely compelling and utterly original novel Remainder. Also a very difficult novel to describe. A man is awarded an enormous sum of money in damages after being hit on the head by falling debris. What he chooses to do with his money is the crux of the story and is unlike anything you'll have ever read before. Wildly entertaining with energetic prose, mind-boggling concepts and a wild, crazy, unforgettable ending. I'd love to see what a clever film-maker could do with it.

If a picture's worth a thousand words, then here's 70,000 of them...

Excuse me for my absence - life is hectic...

Owing to my love, no lust, of jazz, when I get to experience something about "America's Classical Music" between book covers I reach a state of nirvana.

Recently Toronto artist/painter/printmaker Stefan Berg's wordless novel, Let That Bad Air Out: Buddy Bolden's Last Parade was released from Porcupine's Quill Books. It's a stunning depiction of what Berg imagines Buddy Bolden's last performance was like. Berg created a narrative through 70 individual images.

A little context: Buddy Bolden is a mythical figure in the history of jazz who is considered to be the first great jazz cornet soloist. There are no recordings of him, though some claim there was an Edison cylinder made of Bolden and his band but it has never been found. From the late 1890's to 1907 Buddy Bolden was the most prominent cornet player in New Orleans but began to slowly go insane due to alcohol and mental problems. The parade Stefan Berg has recreated in his book is said to be the last time Bolden ever brought a cornet to his lips. He spent the last 24 years of his life in an insane asylum. But the stories of his life have survived him and maintained his place in the history of jazz.

I interviewed Stefan Berg by email to find out what drew him to this iconic story and he told me that: "Michael Ondaatje's novel, Coming Through Slaughter stimulated my interest in the legend of Buddy Bolden. I wanted to create a silent novel about a particular sound and express the energy of a New Orleans parade through still images."

Here are a few images from the book:


This is a stunning visual experience that transcends the graphic novel genre.

I'd suggest you listen to some early Bunk Johnson or Freddie Keppard while experiencing this book to get a feel for the sounds of New Orleans in the French Quarter in the early 1900's.

Powerful picture books. . .

We'll see how Atonement does at the Oscars next weekend (it just might squeak in as Best Picture if the votes are split between No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood). However, if you've seen the movie or read the book and would like another story about the evacuation at Dunkirk, check out this recent and beautiful re-issue of Paul Gallico's classic tale, The Snow Goose, with illustrations by Angela Barrett. I was recently showing this to a teacher who read the story to her class every Remembrance Day because she had loved it as a child and she thought the illustrations were perfect. If Barrett's work looks familiar, you might recognize it from Josephine Poole's retelling of the story of Anne Frank. She has also collaborated with Poole on Joan of Arc.

Fred Vargas - Mystery writer extraordinaire

The Guardian has a terrific interview in their weekend review with bestselling French crime writer Fred Vargas. Among the topics covered are her very strange childhood with a father who wrote books about surrealists and limited his children's reading to mythology, folktales and 17-century baroque poetry. I think Vargas's books are simply terrific and urge you to give her a try if you are on the prowl for a new mystery voice. P.D. James, Ruth Rendall and in particular Reginald Hill fans will love Vargas, due to the complexities of her plots, the fascinating background stories of her characters and her engaging and grumpy protoganist Commissaire Adamsberg who, unlike other detectives burdened with the odd sidekick or two, seems to have an entire department of eccentric co-workers. A great place to start is Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands, which partly takes place in Ottawa and Hull. The real treat in this novel is riding along with Adamsberg who, suspected of a crime he did not commit, has to elude the Quebec police and the RCMP and get on a plane back to Paris to clear his name. Wonderfully ingenious plotting and great fun. Her latest book is This Night's Foul Work which starts with two dead drug dealers but ends up delving into psychological doubles, childhood memories gone wrong, and a ghoulish search for the elixer of everlasting youth. I'm also fond of The Three Evangelists about an opera singer who wakes up one morning to unexpectedly find a tree planted in her backyard. She calls on her neighbours - the three evangelists of the title - to dig it up to see if anything has been buried under it. They find nothing but then the singer goes missing. What is so wonderful about this novel is that the three reluctant sleuths are unemployed historians sharing a house to save on rent, and each is obsessed with his own particular era of study - prehistoric, medieval and WW1. The witty banter and bickering between them, peppered with historical allusions and jokes is a complete treat.

Now that's a stairway to heaven. . .

Sorry to be so obsessed with shelving at the moment (we'll get back to book recommendations soon, I promise) but OHMYGOD! Look at this staircase (read about the construction and see more pictures of this at apartmenttherapy.com )

Storage Fantasies. . .

I've always thought that the ceiling was an under-utilized storage space and who doesn't need more shelving for their books? Thanks to Kimbooktu for the link which led me to a fun decorating website, apartmenttherapy.com which is chock full of innovative ideas and photos of some pretty gorgeous living spaces. It also has an article on 8 small space shelving ideas which you can read here. I am so craving this door:

And I'm strangely attracted to this See-Saw bookshelf if one only had the room. And the money! (but then if you had the money, you'd probably have the room. But booklovers will never really be minimalists, will they?)

Livres de jour. . .

Just back from a trip to Ottawa where we sold the summer lists and displayed our wares at a teacher's show. The trains were delayed both ways (allowing me to finish almost 200 pages of War and Peace), and I arrived home to find my car inextricably encased in a snowbank, but it was a busy show and the Ottawa librarians are always fun to visit. I'd like to give a little plug for Chez Lucien, a lovely, cozy French bistro at the eastern corner of the Market (at Murray and Dalhousie), which was first recommended to me by an Ottawa librarian (quite a few of them hang out there) and which has the added bonus of being open (along with its kitchen) after the normal lunch period. Two hungry and tired reps desperately in need of substinence after packing up the booth and preparing for a five hour train ride on which the food offerings are minimal at best, were very grateful. I highly recommend their burgers which come with salads and great frites.

Ottawa always works on my French language deficiency guilt. In Montreal, I just tend to feel like a dumb tourist; in Ottawa, I feel as if I'm somehow not living up to my civic duty. But there's so little opportunity to practice French in Toronto. So I make up for it by always trying to buy some French literature as my reading skills far outweigh my speaking ones. Last time I was in Ottawa, a French rep recommended some delightful children's books by Bénédicte Guettier featuring L'inspecteur Lapou, a rabbit who solves mysteries in the vegetable garden. I bought a collection of the tales in an anthology called Les Enquêtes du Potager.

I love the world weariness of Inspecteur Lapou. He looks as if he were the estranged French uncle of Peter Rabbit, his longer blue coat heavy on his shoulders, as if he carried not only all the worries of the silly vegetables on his back, but also the responsibility of upholding the dignity of all fictional rabbits since time immortal. These tales are great fun. I bought my copy at Librairie du Soleil in the Market, but I'm sure they are also available at French bookstores in Montreal and Toronto.

Always a sucker for beautifully packaged books, I couldn't help but be drawn to a series of Folio books, published by Gallimard, that were displayed right by the cash register. They were advertised as limited editions of classic books and they consist of the paperback along with a small brochure of autobiographical information about the author. But look at the slipcases that they come with! (As you can see below, I couldn't resist buying several).

So beautiful, so tactile. You can feel the flocked velvet and the cracks between the subway tiles. They look so decadent and mysterious lined up without their titles facing. I can't help gazing at them with the unabashedly greedy pleasure of a bookcollector. (And yes, I do plan to read them!) There were also books in the series by writers in translation such as Hemingway and Karen Blixen, but I only wanted to collect the French writers.
From left to right, the books are:

L’étranger by Albert Camus ( I love how the shiny foil slipcase, held in the right light, mimics the glare of the sun in Meursault's eyes - this was the first full novel I ever read in French and it still retains its narrative and philosophical power).

Terre des hommes by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (because who didn't love Le Petit Prince and want more?)

La vie devant soi by Romain Gary (I've never read this prolific writer, but this novel won the Prix Goncourt and I find it interesting that he was married to the troubled actress Jean Seberg who was so terrific in Goddard's Breathless and Otto Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse. Plus the flocked velvet slipcase is so luxurious to caress.)

Zazie dans le métro by Raymond Queneau (how perfect are those subway tiles? I've read his wonderfully quirky Exercises in Style in English and have always wanted to read more by this founder of the experimental writing group, Oulipo.

Un barrage contre le Pacifique by Marguerite Duras. (It's hard to tell from the photo, but the slipcase actually feels like palm fronds. This novel continues more of the territory she explored in The Lover, about growing up in colonial Indochina).

2008 Preview - New Classics (no not an oxymoron)

I've spent most of the past two weeks completely immersed in Tolstoy. I had chosen War and Peace as my big book to leisurely read in 2008, but I accelerated the project when I found out that Cinematique was showing Sergei Bondarchuk's mammoth seven hour 1965 film version. It was quite a marvellous experience to see it on the big screen - the best battle scenes I've ever witnessed in a film, a fantastic score, and some very interesting, experimental cinematography). While the recent Modern Library edition with the new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky has been getting great reviews, it's just too heavy to fit in my purse, or to lie comfortably on my chest in bed, and so I decided instead to go with the 3-volume Everyman edition translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude. I like the fact that the two actually knew Tolstoy.

Which is my segue into the main subject of my post - a sneak preview into the "new" classics coming out this year. I make a conscious effort to choose a classic for every tenth book that I read ("classic" loosely defined in my own terms as anything written before I was born with The Classics being enduring books that are continually referenced by critics, writers, filmmakers, playwrights, musicians etc.) Everyone has their own sense of what a classic means to them as a reader; what I hope every good reader (and writer) acknowledges, is how important the classics are to understanding and appreciating our contemporary literature. They are also fairly indispensable to anyone working in the book industry. If a book's jacket is going to call a novel "Shandyesque" or celebrates how well it evokes Dickensian London, it helps if you've read Laurence Sterne or Bleak House. Plus you know that for the most part, if a book has stayed in print for decades or centuries, it has obvious lasting appeal power. But classics aren't just a enticing glimpse into the past - they continue to have relevance with our contemporary obsessions, and often trends in popular and literary culture are inspired or pulled directly from them. And this is why publishers continue to reissue and repackage the classics or keep an eye out for those lost gems that are due for a rediscovery. And why I personally collect a number of classic lines such as Persephone Books (seen the trailer yet for the upcoming Frances McDormand/Amy Adams movie Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day? Persephone brought that book back into print); Hesperus Books (they specialize in small novellas - perfect for travel reading. Going to the opera? Hesperus publishes Merimee's Carmen and Prevost's Manon Lescaut among their many titles, and check out their amazing collections of Bronte juvenalia. You think you know Charlotte Bronte? Read The Spell); Virago Modern Classics which have introduced me to some fantastic 20th century women writers, and Folio Society Books because they are just plain gorgeous.

But one of the thrilling parts of my job is actually getting to sell some great classic imprints. One of the most beautifully packaged lines are the beforementioned Everymans. They are cloth covered hardcovers, (terrific for libraries) with beautiful, creamy, acid-free paper, a ribbon bookmark, and with good introductions, bibliographies, and historical timelines. They look majestic all lined up on a shelf; nothing furnishes a library more. Apparently Richard Burton gave a whole set as a wedding gift (can't remember for which wedding) to Elizabeth Taylor. Everyman has just come out with The Complete Novels of Flann O'Brien which includes At Swim Two-Birds, The Third Policeman and in particular, The Dalkey Archive which I've always wanted to read, considering that yet another respected classics and international literature publisher took its name from that novel. (I've just gone to Dalkey's website and their namesake novel, which they also publish, is described as "the best comic fantasy since Tristram Shandy"). See? Hot on the heels of the critical acclaim for Hermione Lee's biography of Edith Wharton, Everyman is also reissuing The Age of Innocence, and The House of Mirth, and publishing a lovely threesome of novellas consisting of Ethan Frome, Summer, and The Bunner Sisters, with an introduction by Hermione Lee. In May, an edition of Charlotte Bronte's Shirley will be published coupled with her first novel, The Professor.

NYRB Classics has a lot of really exciting works to look forward to this year. This is an imprint that publishes their books with a lot of love, beautiful covers, and savvy professionalism. Coming next month are two new Guy de Maupassant books (come on, we all read "The Necklace" in high school). Afloat is a travel memoir about cruising along the French Mediterranean. Alien Hearts, Maupassant's final work, is the story of three lovers bound by bitterness and passion. If you are a fan of Edith Wharton, you might want to check out Belchamber by Howard Sturgis, a friend of Wharton's, whose 1904 novel is a satire of the English ruling class. The novel I'm most looking forward to is Stefan Zweig's The Post-Office Girl. I find the cover completely haunting, and this story of a dissatisfied girl in post WWI Austria and her relationship with a war veteran, fits completely into my interest in WWI literature. This novel has never been published in English before. Another intriguing novel that will be out later this month is Victor Serge's Unforgiving Years, also never before translated into English. It follows a group of characters from pre WWII Paris, to Leningrad under siege by the Nazis, to Berlin and then to Mexico after the war and is billed as a cross between Celiné and le Carré. Have you seen the intricate, suspenseful movie, The Prestige or read the book by Christopher Priest? An earlier work, The Inverted World, will be out this summer. This looks like a lot of fun, set in a city that needs to constantly move along tracks or it will die. When it was first published in 1974, the London Tribune said it had, "one of the trickiest and most astonishing twist endings in modern SF". Can't wait. Also on the horizon is Vladimir Sorokin's The Queue which is about a group of people in line, but for what, they have no idea. NYRB also publishes children's classics and the poster I had up at OLA of James Thurber's The 13 Clocks elicited more squeals of delight than almost any other book in our booth. How can you resist a tale about an evil duke who believes he has killed time? This new edition will have an introduction by Neil Gaiman. And finally, how perfect is this? For all those like me who are tackling War and Peace, you can turn to Defeat: Napoleon's Russian Campaign by Philippe-Paul de Segur. Tolstoy used this eye-witness account, written by a young aide-de-campe to Napoleon, as major source material for his novel.

For some Canadian classics, The New Canadian Library has recently undergone a make-over with new covers and trim size, but it has also brought back some novels that have been out of print. Of these, I highly recommend The Clockmaker by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, originally published in 1836, which introduces Sam Slick of Slickville as he tours 19th century Nova Scotia or Brian Moore's The Luck of Ginger Coffey, the 1960 Governor General's award winning novel about a fortune-hunter in Montreal. And it being the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables, it will be all Anne, all the time - at least in this country. But that will be the subject of another post.

OLA wrap-up, recovery, and revelation. . .

Whew, one show down. And a very successful and busy one despite the bad weather on Friday. But then librarians are nothing if not resilient. Thanks to everyone who came out to both of our Dewey sessions (especially through the snowstorm on Friday morning) , and for all the kind and encouraging comments you passed on to us about our presentations, former picks of ours that you'd read and similarily loved, and even this blog! We all felt a lot of love.

I had to spend a lot of time in our booth, but did manage to catch a bit of Ami McKay's session where she talked about the role that research (and librarians and archivists) plays in her work, both The Birth House (which won the OLA's Evergreen award) and also her next novel, The Virgin Cure, which I can't wait to read. Loosely based on the life of her great-great-grandmother, it will explore the lives of early women doctors in the 19th century and the prejudices they had to overcome to receive their education and practice their profession. The title comes from the belief that if men who had syphilis slept with a virgin, even a child, they would be cured. Ami is a wonderfully warm and engaging author and has a terrific blog called Incidental Pieces that I urge you all to check out.
There were a number of other speakers at OLA that I couldn't get to, including Carl Honore and Elizabeth May, but John Miedema did, and wrote about them at his blog Slow Reading. And congratulations to Sharron Smith from Kitchener Public Library who was crowned Librarian of the Year for all her work with Readers' Advisory. Sharron has been a big supporter of the Deweys for years and we're all thrilled for her well-deserved honour!

After several late nights, and running on adreneline and too much caffeine all through the show, I've been taking it "slow" myself this weekend, and relaxing on my couch with some new DVDs. But one can never quite get away from the literary world (which is why I love it so much). I first watched Truffaut's Day for Night which is a very funny and reverant take on the film industry and all the craziness that goes on behind the scenes. It also reveals some of the technical tricks of filmmaking. But at one point the character of a British insurance man appears, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Graham Greene. Could it be? I put the movie on pause, and turned to the index of his recent collection of letters, edited by Richard Greene. Sure enough, he was in the French Riveria at the time and wanted to meet Truffaut. Truffaut's assistant cast him as an extra without telling the director until after the scene was shot. Next up was a PBS documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright by Ken Burns and Lynn Novik. I became especially interested in Wright's life after reading the novel Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (which Sharron Smith has been unrelentingly recommending to everyone in earshot all fall) and it's quite a wonderful documentary with equal portions focusing on Wright's tumultous personal life, along with an evaluation of his incredible work. It was great to see so many archival photos of early houses and buildings including Tallesin, where much of Loving Frank takes place. Finally, I watched Love, Etc, a movie based actually more on Julian Barnes' novel Talking it Over which is his prequel to Love, Etc. Both deal with the friendship between two men that is threatened and complicated when they fall in love with the same woman, who flipflops in her affection between the two of them. In the movie version, starring the always interesting Charlotte Gainsbough, her real-life husband Yvan Attal, and Charles Berling, the characters and locale are moved to France, but this makes perfect sense, not only because Barnes has a natural and literary affinity with the country, but in a movie that mostly revolves around talk, philosophy and love - the subject seems tailormade for a French movie. I enjoyed it very much. And I think my mind is now rested enough to tackle some reading again.

OLA Dewey events

Off today to do the non-glamourous stuff of my job - set up our booth in the Bookfair at the Ontario Library Association's Super Conference which starts tomorrow. This is one of my favourite shows of the year although it is a bit nerve-wracking because it is the first show; one is not quite a well-oiled show machine yet. But it's a busy one and full of librarians who want to talk about books. All the Deweys will be there at their respective publishers' booths, so do stop by and say hello and tell us what you're reading.

The Dewey Divas will also be doing two separate sessions, talking about the upcoming books of the Spring season, one focused on adult books (session #311 at 9:05, Thursday, 31st) and one on children's books (session #1028, at 9:05 Friday, Feb. 1st). Hope to see you there!
For those out west, we'll also be hitting Calgary, Edmonton and the Alberta Library Conference in April, and a few of us will also be at BCLA and CLA.

The Independent Dream Lives on. . .

Ever dreamed of opening your own bookstore? Well who hasn't? I certainly have, but my dream store would be so eccentrically stocked it would never make any money. Still we can live vicariously online through these brave entrepreneurs. Jessica Stockton-Bagnulo, an employee at McNally Robinson's New York store, has just won $15,000 in a contest presenting business plans for new ventures. She hopes to open her new bookstore in Brooklyn and has been blogging about her concepts and challenges at The Written Nerd (she also has great book recommendations). Or you can follow the adventures of Simon Key and Tim West, two former employees of a Waterstone's branch that closed in their North London neighbourhood. They have now decided to open their own bookstore, The Big Green Bookshop, and you can look on at their blog, Open a Bookshop, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Despite the closures of so many independents over the last few years, there still are many success stories. One of these is Crockett and Powell, also in London, also with a great blog. It was at their blog that I first heard of one of their employees, Marie Phillips; her very funny, first book, Gods Behaving Badly, we subsequently ended up publishing. They were also where I first heard of Catherine O'Flynn's wonderful first novel, What Was Lost which we'll be publishing in June. These booksellers were so enthusiastic about it. Support your independent bookstores, both in your own neighbourhood and when you travel: we'd truly be lost without them.

And - just after posting this, I discovered via their fortnightly online letter that Persephone Books is opening another store, this time in Notting Hill. Hooray! You can read about it here, where there is also a lovely photo of the interior of their shop in the Bloomsbury area. I never go to London without stopping by - it' s truly delightful.

Private Eyes, Dames, and... Robots?

I've always enjoyed a good classic PI story (Dashiell Hammett and Philip Marlowe come to mind) and I was thrilled when I read the following two books from my Winter lists that take the essence of this genre and reinvent it in two very different ways.

The first is B.C. native Linda L. Richards' Death Was the Other Woman. Dexter J. Theroux is a hard-drinking P.I. in Depression-era Los Angeles, with a lot of personal demons and not a lot of clients. Kitty Pangborn is his secretary: born to a wealthy family that lost it all in the stock market crash of 1929, she now needs Dex’s pay check in order to survive. So when her boss hits the bottle a little too hard and isn’t in any shape to drive to tail their (only) client’s lover, she acts as chauffeur to get the job done. But when the lover is murdered on their watch and his corpse later disappears, what at first looked to be a simple job is just the beginning of a complex web of betrayals, schemes, and double-crosses that keep you guessing until the end. You've got all of the familiar conventions of the genre (femme fatales, gangsters, speakeasies etc.) but the story is made fresh and unique by telling it from Kitty's perspective. Kitty not only helps Dex with his investigations but also does some snooping on her own, and I like that she's not the type of heroine who clumsily stumbles upon the killer. She's smart, intuitive and is more practical than romantic. Each character in the book, from Kitty to Dex, to the mysterious Mustard and glamorous Brucie are complex and interesting, and I missed them all when I finished the book. The descriptions of 1930’s L.A. are so evocative, you’ll feel as though you are right there with the characters. I hope the author has a sequel in the works!

Completely different, but no less fun to read is A. Lee Martinez's The Automatic Detective. Mack Megatron is a bot (automated citizen) living in the futuristic, heavily polluted Empire City. He was originally built for world domination, but when he spontaneously developed self awareness he decided he'd rather be a productive member of society. Turning in his evil creator to the authorities, he has applied for citizenship and is on probation until the city officials are convinced he won't regress and level the city. When the story begins, Mac is trying to make ends meet by driving a cab: a bot needs a LOT of electricity to recharge, after all, and electricity doesn't come cheap. He also needs to keep out of trouble as officials are just looking for an excuse to send him to the scrap heap. He has befriended Julie in the apartment next door who fixes his uniform tie each morning, as his hands are not really designed for such delicate work. But this morning, she's not her usual friendly self when he knocks on her door and when she and her family later disappear without a trace, he deduces that something very bad has happened. Deciding their friendship to be worth risking his chance for citizenship, he borrows a trenchcoat and fedora from his friend Jung (a Jane-Austen-loving, sentient gorilla), who also is the only person Mack knows with clothes that might fit him, and sets off to find Julie and her family. The search takes Mack all over Empire city from its dive bars and back alleys to the fanciest skyscraper and government offices. Along the way, he meets a brainy biological dame who is very easy on the optical sensors, a six-armed mutant lowlife, a little green mob boss, a few aliens, almost gets blown up a few times, and uncovers a secret conspiracy at the heart of the city. Fans of hard-boiled PI mysteries or science fiction readers will both get a kick out of this story. It is very witty, very smart, and is a highly entertaining way to spend a weekend afternoon.

Hooray for A.L. Kennedy . . .

. . . who wins this year's Costa Prize (formerly the Whitbread) for her novel Day. This is one of the season's most interesting awards because the judges first choose a winner in five categories - best novel, biography, first novel, poetry and children's book. The winners then battle each other for the big prize. A.L. Kennedy ranks right up there with my list of favourite contemporary writers and she is also an astonishingly good reader; if she's ever doing a book event in your town, drop everything and go and see her. Failing that, check out her work. Day is about a WWII gunner who relives his war experiences when, five years later he works as an film extra, playing a POW. Paradise is an extraordinary novel that takes you viscerally into the mind of an alchoholic woman and despite its dark subject has moments of incredible humour. My favourite novel of hers though, is Everything You Need which honestly, was unlike anything I've ever read before or since. It's the story of a group of odd and almost macabre writers living on a bleak island retreat. The main character Nathan becomes a mentor to Mary, a new writer who does not know that Nathan is in fact her father. There are unforgettable scenes in this book of pure brilliance. Truly a masterpiece.

Kennedy's win has totally made my day!

Skating

Not terribly book related - but I just wanted to say HOORAY! - wasn't that a great Canadian Figure Skating Championship over the weekend? I love this sport and I love the fact that Canadians always do well and are always in the hunt for podium finishes. The 2010 Olympic Games are shaping up to be a repeat of Calgary in 1988, which is tremendously exciting.

Which makes me wonder - has the great figure skating novel been written? Does anyone have a nomination? I can only think of that great scene in Virginia Woolf's Orlando - Orlando and Sasha skating down the frozen Thames:

It was an evening of astonishing beauty. As the sun sank, all the domes, spires, turrets, and pinnacles of London rose in inky blackness against the furious red sunset clouds. Here was the fretted cross at Charing; there the dome of St Paul's; there the massy square of the Tower buildings; there like a grove of trees stripped of all leaves save a knob at the end were the heads on the pikes at Temple Bar. Now the Abbey windows were lit up and burnt like a heavenly, many-coloured shield (in Orlando's fancy); now all the west seemed a golden window with troops of angels (in Orlando's fancy again) passing up and down the heavenly stairs perpetually. All the time they seemed to be skating in fathomless depths of air, so blue the ice had become; and so glassy smooth was it that they sped quicker and quicker to the city with the white gulls circling about them, and cutting in the air with their wings the very same sweeps that they cut on the ice with their skates.

Not your usual Detective Story

Here's an intriguing, little novella if you are looking for a gripping story that you can read in one sitting. Detective Story by Imre Kertesz, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature a few years ago, was originally published in 1977, but has just been re-issued with a new English translation by Tim Wilkinson. The story takes place in an unnamed South American country and our narrator, Antonio Martens, is currently in jail awaiting his sentence for his involvement in the murders of Federigo and Enrique Salinas, a wealthy father and son who owned a chain of department stores. As Martens informs us, "I wish to tell a story. A simple story. You may ultimately call it a sickening one, but that does not change its simpleness. I wish therefore to tell a simple and sickening story."
Sickening it may be, but simple it is not. As Martens writes his version of events, we follow his downward trajectory from simple police cop to becoming a member of the Corps, a secret police organization responsible for more political and sinister activities leading to torture and murder. But Martens has also obtained Enrique's diary and liberally inserts sections of it into his narrative, so that we also get the story of a spoiled idealist whose naivety leads to tragedy. There is a wonderfully sustained suspense throughout this universal story about bad choices and their inevitable consequences.

Children's Award News

The ALSC Awards were just announced on the ALA website and I'm happy to say that some of my favourite books and authors from the past year were honoured.

• Knuffle Bunny Too by Mo Willems: 2008 Caldecott Honor Book
• First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger: 2008 Caldecott Honor Book, 2008 Geisel Honor Book
• There is a Bird On Your Head by Mo Willems: 2008 Geisel Award Winner for the most distinguished book for beginning readers.
• Vulture View by April Pulley Sayre, Illustrated by Steve Jenkins 2008 Geisel Honor Book
• Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby: Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award (Teen Category Ages 13-18) for books that embody the artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.
• Orson Scott Card is the recipient of the 2008 Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults honoring his outstanding lifetime contribution to writing for teens for his novels “Ender's Game” and “Ender's Shadow.”
• The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano by Margarita Engle and illustrated by Sean Qualls is the 2008 Pura Belpré Author Award recipient. This award honors Latino authors and illustrators whose work best portrays, affirms and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in children's books.
• Yuyi Morales, illustrator of Los Gatos Black on Halloween is the winner of the 2008 Pura Belpré Illustrator Award. Los Gatos Black on Halloween, written by Marisa Montes, is also a 2008 Pura Belpré Honor Book

I've heard so much about the following books from my fellow divas, I must admit to getting very excited about the news on their behalf too!

• Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis: Winner of the Coretta Scott King Book Award, Newbery Honor book
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick: Winner of the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children.
• Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad illustrated by Kadir Nelson, written by Ellen Levine was named a Caldecott Honor Book
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones was given the Alex Award as one of the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences.

For the full list of winners click on the following link to the ALA website.

I know Xmas is over, but can someone buy me this?

Why haven't I heard of this before? They have a book version of Monopoly! Bookopoly is played exactly the same way except that the properties are books and instead of building houses and hotels, you get to build bookstores and libararies. Dovegreyreader describes how much fun it is to play. I want to be the spectacles.

The Beauty of all things Bookish

Here's an interesting website devoted to exhibiting the art of the bookmark. It's quite interesting to look at the historical ones from the Victorian and Art Nouveau eras. (My personal favourite bookmarks however, are the ones that Persephone Books provides with everyone of their books. They represent the fabric reproduced on the book's endpapers - a fabric from either the time in which the book was published or set in.) And the Guardian picks their top ten most beautiful bookshops around the world here. Out of their list, I've only been to Hatchards in London. My pick for most beautiful? Well, one of them would surely have to be the bookstore on the first floor of Salts Mill in Saltaire, Yorkshire. The textile mill was originally built in 1853 and restored only fairly recently. The artist David Hockney has a gallery on an upper floor and there is an excellent cafe as well as lots of other shops. The town (which my grandparents used to live in - I have ancestors who used to work in the mill) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its preservation of how a Victorian mill town would have looked, and is well worth a stop if one is in the area - on the way to Haworth, for example.

Happy Birthday Simone. . .

Today is the centenary of Simone de Beauvoir's birth. Forget all the fuss about her sex life and go read some of her works. The Mandarins is a masterpiece - a fantastic and complex novel following a group of characters as they struggle with their political conscience and subsequent life decisions following the end of WWII. Her most famous book The Second Sex, is a feminist classic. An interesting travel book penned by her is America Day by Day which is an account of her four month visit to the U.S. in 1947, where she met and began an affair with American writer Nelson Algren (whose Walk on the Wild Side, a novel about the seedy side of New Orleans, I highly recommend). I haven't yet read his travelogue of going over to Paris, called Who Lost an American? but it's on the pile. Their affair is partially chronicled in A Transatlantic Love Affair, a collection of her letters to Algren. Plenty of books exist of course on her relationship with Sartre including Hazel Rowley's recent Tete-A-Tete: The Tumultous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, which got decent reviews.
You can test your de Beauvoir knowledge at the Guardian's quiz.

Homecomings. . .

I was going to post a review of Bernhard Schlink's new novel Homecoming today but en route, I checked (as I do every week), Michael Dirda's column in the Washington Post and discovered he just reviewed the same book, and really, he's so eloquent and spot-on, what is there really to add? (This is why he's my favourite reviewer - he has my exact reading taste!) So I'm just urging everyone to read the review here and then of course to read the novel. What really impressed me about the work was the constant change in narrative tone and the craft in which Schlink works his stories-within-stories, so that for a novel of only 272 pages, one feels as if one has almost read an epic. It's an extremely satisfying, challenging read - one of those great books that lingers long after. A great reading companion would be Alberto Manguel's recent Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey: A Biography. This is part of an interesting series of biographies of great books that trace the cultural history and impact of literature on subsequent writers (and readers). Manguel begins by accumulating all the biographical evidence there is about Homer and then traces how Virgil, Dante, Racine, Joyce of course, and many other writers and philosophers have been influenced by these two poems. One of the writers briefly mentioned by Manguel is Alberto Moravia whose novel Contempt I really enjoyed reading over the holidays. It's the story of a scriptwriter reluctantly working on a film version of The Odyssey as his marriage is falling apart - for reasons that echo theories about Penelope and Ulysses that are debated in the novel. The film version, starring Brigitte Bardot and directed by Jean-Luc Goddard is pretty good too.