The NYRB Challenge One Year Later. . .

Yikes - where did the year go?  Well, I didn't accomplish my goal, which was to read 50 NYRB Classics in one year, starting from Labour Day 2009.  I almost got there - as I write, I'm in the middle of reading my 45th.  In my defense, according to my reading diary, I did read 72 other books in that time period, both for work and pleasure. However, I'm not giving up until I hit the 50 mark - I'll just give myself until the end of 2010 which seems perfectly doable, and this will allow me to tackle some longer titles that I've been eyeing. I certainly have enjoyed this challenge so far, and I'll post a full summary when I'm done. If you want to see which books I've already read, click here.  I'll also offer another great NYRB giveaway to readers when my challenge is over, so stay tuned.

NYRB Challenge #44: In the Society of A Different Literary Guernsey. . .

Ever since being charmed - like so many other readers - by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows' The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, I've been wanting to read more about this intriguing little island and its history.  The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards completely fits the bill, and I couldn't have asked for a more charming, comic, and curmudgeonly guide than the novel's title character.

Ebenzer Le Page is one of the oldest inhabitants on the island and thoughout his life, he's barely set a foot off it. He's so old, he's outlived nearly all of his generation - and most of their offspring as well. As such, he's been a witness to the enormous changes on Guernsey, having lived through both world wars, the German occupation and  - what's almost worse - the British occupation of wealthy tax evaders and tourists, who have completely destroyed the traditional way of life and values of the island.  He decides to write the story of his life and evoke the island of his youth, because not only because of the physical changes, but the societal ones as well; people just don't talk to each other anymore:

They all make a fuss of me when I arrive, and shoo the cat off the armchair for me to sit in; but they are not really interested in anything I have to say. It is not that I want to say much; but I like to sit in a corner, and listen to people talking and put in my spoke now and then. Nowadays people don't talk among themselves around the fire like they used to. As soon as I've sat down and been made comfortable . . . I have to sit in the half-dark and look at the horrible T.V.; and you can't put your spoke in against the T.V.

NYRB Challenge #43: More Mitford Madness. . .

The famous and fascinating Mitford sisters have been amply written about, and Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford is one of the less obscure books that NYRB has reprinted. However, I'd never read it before and it truly is as delightful as its literary reputation. It covers the years of Jessica's upbringing in an eccentric British family, her frustrations at not being able to get a proper education, her early establishment of a "Running Away Fund" at her local bank, and her subsequent use of the money when at nineteen, she ran away to Spain with her second cousin Esmond Romilly - Winston Churchill's nephew - who had already fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The two married and spent some years in America before Esmond enlisted in the Canadian Air Force and was killed over the North Sea in 1941 at the age of only 23.

Much of this ground, especially the early childhood, has been covered in the biographies and in Nancy Mitford's comic novels, such as The Pursuit of Love. Jessica points out that Nancy was "too sharp-tonged and sarcastic to be anyone's Favourite Sister for long", giving as this hilarious example, "if one had taken particular trouble to do one's hair in ringlets, she was apt to remark, 'You look like the oldest and ugliest of the Bronte sisters today.'" 

Toronto Film Festival Fever. . .

I'm feeling rather chuffed with myself.

After a frustrating four and a half hours, I finally got my hands on tickets for twenty films at this year's Toronto Film Festival. I'm packing them in, but I'm very excited about the variety. As an avid traveler and reader of literature in translation, I equally enjoy foreign films and I love the secret thrill I get when one art form references another.  I'm seeing films from France, India, Japan, Brazil, Germany, China, Hong Kong, Uruguay, Spain, Portugal, Turkey (Istanbul is this year's spotlight city) as well as a smattering of Canadian, American and British films. I generally eschew the more mainstream, Hollywood films that will be out in theatres over the next few months (although I always make an exception for Colin Firth -I've got a ticket to The King's Speech ), and most of the literary adaptations at this year's fest - Never Let Me Go, Barney's Version, Tamara Drewe - fall into that category.  But one never knows with foreign films whether they will ever get a North American distribution deal, so I made sure to nab a ticket to  Tran Anh Hung's adaptation of Haruki Murakami's novel Norwegian Wood.  I've read some Murakami, but not that one although I'll try to remedy that before the screening.

We'll also get a chance to finally see TIFF's new home, the Bell Lightbox building. Apparently it's going to contain a bookstore which I'm excited to check out. It would be so wonderful if it not only featured books on film but also had a great selection of international literature.  Meanwhile, the city is getting ready for the buzz and the celebrities. My favourite part of the whole experience is just chatting to other film buffs in the line-ups - most of whom usually have a book in their hand as well.

Fan Expo!!!

In case you missed it, Fan Expo 2010 was a total blast...the crowds were absolutely insane. At one point, they had to shut the doors for two hours as there were so many people. They have put a note on their website saying they have secured an even bigger location at Toronto's Metro Convention Centre for next year. The costumes were amazing, weird and sometimes not quite understandable (click on the picture to get a real good look at some of the best ones). As the publisher of the many Encyclopedia's (Marvel, Star Wars, Lost etc) DK's booth was packed. We like to think we know alot about our books, but the fans really had us beat. Until next year!

Bowled Over By the Brits. . .

As it happens, two of the Dewey Divas (and one former Dewey Diva), are all going to be in London at some point this fall, although alas, not at the same time. We all love to shop and I'll certainly be doing the rounds of the independent bookstores and stocking up on tights from Marks & Spencers (honestly - they last years!) Rosalyn has already discovered this amazing boot shop that will make custom boots (because one of the great mysteries of life is why so many long boots fit so few people with normal sized calves).  Today, my great find has been Bobbin Bicycles - a store that not only specializes in vintage bikes but check out all the cool, retro bike accessories here!  Okay, I'm officially in love with this Bowler Hat bicycle helmet - apparently completely certified for safety. There's also a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker helmet as well.

NYRB Challenge #41 & 42: Fighting Tyranny With Art. . .

I hadn't planned it, but reading these two complementary books - one fiction, one non-fiction - back to back was an illuminating experience. As both were tackling the problem of how best to combat an authoritarian government, it gave rise to the age old debate - is truth stranger than fiction?

Clandestine in Chile by Gabriel García Márquez, translated by Asa Zatz, is the true story, as told to Márquez through hours of interviews, of the six weeks that film director Miguel Littin spent in Chile in 1985, filming a documentary about how his country had changed under the dictatorship of General Pinochet. Littin hadn't been back to his native home in over twelve years and for a very good reason - his name was on a list of exiles forbidden entry. So his task was both dangerous and extremely complicated. He used three different international film crews who weren't aware of the full nature of his project (or of each other), and then by completely changing his physical appearance and accent to impersonate a Uruguayan businessman, complete with false passport and wife, he entered Chile, not once but several times. What made this an engaging and fascinating read, was not only the rather amazing technical planning and choreography involved to pull this project off successfully (the number of passwords and drop-off locations alone were staggering) but Littin's own wry observations on the difficulties - both comic and stressful - of having to look and become this complete stranger. So it reads partly like a spy thriller and partly like the story of an existential crisis. But Littin is a good storyteller and very humble about the arrogant mistakes he made that could have put his friends in great danger. However, the cameras roll, the film is successfully smuggled out, and the only frustration I have now, upon finishing this book, is that I can't find a copy of the documentary anywhere. Its title is Acta General de Chile, and I'll keep looking, because my interest is definitely piqued.

Fairy Tales and so much more

Now that I have a small niece and nephew, I’ve become a lot more interested in children’s books. I really love the humour of the pigeon books and I can identify with some of Scaredy Squirrel’s anxieties. I’ve also recently discovered quite a few classics that I missed as a kid.

As a publisher’s sales rep I get to work with lots of enthusiastic and knowledgeable librarians and booksellers and many of them have given me great recommendations for children’s literature. I’ve also come across a couple of wonderful reference books:

1001 Children’s Book You Must Read Before You Grow Up is a British book, but includes stories from all around the world. It’s a beautiful book that's packed full of vivid colour illustrations. The book is divided into age groups (ranging from 0-3 to 12+), and is then organized chronologically within each group. Each book title has a half page description (sometimes more), the year of publication, nationality of author and illustrator, original publisher, and many include lists of other books with similar themes. Most of the books listed also feature a colour cover alongside the description and some include inside illustrations as well. I showed this book to my co-worker and she ran out and bought a copy for herself the same day.

The editor of Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book has interviewed well known Americans and asked them to name their favorite children’s book. Included in each of the 110 selections is a brief plot description, an excerpt from the book, and an explanation of why that book is so special. The list of celebrities ranges from Dave Eggers to Judy Blume and Julianne Moore. There are a lot of children’s authors included on the list of celebrities and it’s interesting to see what books inspired them when they were young.

War, Parents and Politics. . .

One of my Dewey picks for the must-read, meaty, literary novel this fall is David Grossman's To The End of the Land, translated by Jessica Cohen. It's an incredibly moving and powerful story about contemporary war told from a mother's point of view. It's set in Israel, but is a completely universal story of pain, fear and waste that reverberates through the generations. It will be available in September but the global media is already starting. There's an in-depth interview with Grossman - who tragically lost his own son while writing the novel - in The Guardian.  You can read it here.

Creative Inc. Stop Motion

This was the first book I read on the Fall 2010 list; (mostly because it was the first advance I got) but I like reading business books and like to think I am a creative soul. So when the author of Craft, Inc. decided to write Creative, Inc., a business book for freelance creative types I was sold. Because of its target audience it is very funkily designed. I have read enough business books to see that the the content is pretty right on target. And of course, being as artistic and fun as they are, they put together a super cool stop motion trailer...enjoy!

Kenk Again

Cory Doctorow has reviewed Kenk on BoingBoing, which is frequently ranked as one of the top 100 blogs out there. I think Doctorow has really nailed it; the book was a complicated one to sell (although it sold out of its first print run in 3 weeks) in Toronto. Doctorow himself had dealings with Kenk...as the headline states, the book humanizes him without apologizing for him. Check it out.

Winners and Finalists Announced for the 2010 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing

Congratulations to the winners & finalists of the 2010 William Saroyan Prize!

• Winner for Fiction: Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
• Winner for Nonfiction: The King Of Vodka by Linda Himelstein

Intended to encourage new or emerging writers and honor the Saroyan literary legacy of originality, vitality and stylistic innovation, the Saroyan Prize recognizes newly published works of both fiction and non-fiction.

The two finalists for each award were:

Non-Fiction:

• Trauma Farm by Brian Brett (Greystone)
• Aesop's Mirror by MaryAlice Huggins (FSG)

Fiction:

• Apologize, Apologize!by Elizabeth Kelly (Random House)
• Concord, Virginia by Peter Neofotis (St. Martin's Press)

Up We Grow!

Really how spectacular is this window...Vancouver's Kidsbooks does it again. This window is to announce the launch of Up We Grow and Stanley's Little Sister. Up We Grow is a celebration of small local farms and gives kids a sense of how wonderful and important they are. Speaking of which, this weekend we headed down to The Brickworks, Toronto's largest local farmer's market. My daughter described the peaches I bought (which were picked the day before) as a fantasy. Even though I got there at 8:30, the place was packed. If you are on the otherside of the country, you are cordially invited to the launch of Up We Grow at Kidsbooks on Thursday August 26th at 7pm. Locally yummies will be served.

NYRB Challenge #40: The Mountain Lion Roars. . .

Having read and reviewed books by Robert Lowell's second and third wives (Elizabeth Hardwick and Caroline Blackwood respectively), it would have seemed bad manners to ignore his first, Jean Stafford. And I think she was the most talented of the three.
The Mountain Lion is a rather strange and awkward coming-of-age novel, full of subtle and uncomfortable tensions between generations and siblings. Ralph Fawcett and his younger sister Molly are rebellious allies against their widowed mother, two older sisters, and everything they represent - a world based on propriety and society's moral values, and one in which almost anything noisy, fun, or actively done outdoors is frowned upon. Two worlds are represented by two grandfathers - the dead, respectable Grandfather Bonney, whose portrait and memory are prominently alive in the household, and gruff, rugged Grandfather Kenyon, Mrs. Fawcett's step-father, who visits them annually and holds a certain mystique for Ralph and Molly, if only because their mother dislikes him so much. When he suddenly dies the first day of his visit, the children meet his son, Uncle Claude,  who invites them to visit his ranch in Colorado. They ride horses for the first time, hike in the mountains and Ralph learns to shoot.  When their mother and sisters embark on a year long trip around the world, Ralph and Molly move in with their uncle. The title of the novel refers to the elusive animal that Ralph and Claude glimpse from time to time in the mountains; it becomes a competitive obsession to kill it. (This novel would actually make an interesting read alongside Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro).

It is very much a novel of diametrics. Characters and landscapes take on deeper hues against the narrative interplay with their opposites. Kathryn Davis who contributes a very good afterword, even calls the prose part Henry James and part Mark Twain. Molly is the imaginative, fearless one who wants to be a writer, who observes the world's hypocrisies and calls people to account.  Ralph is all coiled energy, revelling and sometimes reviling, his changing physicality and emerging notions of masculinity and sexuality. The sibling relationship is by turns complicit, petulant, and dangerous. It's also one of the most complicated and compelling ones I've ever encountered in fiction. This could also be a great YA crossover book for a good teen reader.

Just a note - this edition starts with an author's introduction written many years after the book's publication, in which Stafford does reveal the book's ending, so avoid it if you don't want spoilers (and it's a fairly crucial spoiler).

On the Road Movie

MTV.com announced casting informatation about the upcoming adaptation of the Jack Kerouak book On the Road. Amy Adams, Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart & Kirsten Dunst- what a cast!

Check out this link to GalleyCat which talks about the movie and includes a link to a YouTube video of a 1959 interview with Jack Kerouak on The Steve Allen Show.

Library Thingy

Book cataloguing site Library Thingy has added a tool so that publishers can now catalogue their books on the site. Check it out!

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

One of the most anticipated books of the fall is Freedom, the new book by Jonathan Franzen. It's his first in the nine years since winning the National Book Award for The Corrections.

I'm not just saying this because HarperCollins is publishing the book in Canada! According to this article in PW entitled 'It's Time for Franzen', Franzen will be featured on the cover of the August 23rd issue of Time magazine- the first living author to be so featured in a decade.

PW gave it a starred review, reassuring fans of The Corrections who wondered if Freedom would be able to 'find its own voice in its predecessor’s shadow. In short: yes, it does, and in a big way.'

The book doesn't release until August 31st, but 4 lucky Dewey Diva blog readers can win a copy of the ARC ahead of time and take their names off of the holds list!

Please send an e-mail with the subject line Freedom by Jonathan Franzen to rosalyn.steele@harpercollins.com, along with the full mailing address of your library. I'll collect names until the end of day Monday August 16th and draw four winners Tuesday morning. Open to Canadian libraries only, sorry!

Good luck!

Henri Cartier-Bresson at the AIC

While in Chicago we went to the Art Institute of Chicago where we saw the exhibit Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century. We are very fortunate to represent an amazing distributor, D.A.P who represent some of the finest art publishers in the world including the MOMA who produced the book for show. Cartier-Bresson was instrumental in bringing photography to the masses and travelled all over the world honing his craft. The book and the exhibit showcase for the first time, the incredible reach he had. At the show, there was an amazing map and timeline showing how broad his travels were...very cool.

Cake Pops!

Finally Cake Pops is here! I have been totally excited about this book since I saw it listed at sales conference in April. This past weekend my daughter, niece and I made a batch. It was easier than I thought. Initally I had great expectations of making chicks and cows and such, but realised that I had better just get down the technique. The result was pretty amazing if I do say so myself. I took them to the CGTA, which is Canada's largest gift show (you can see us pictured on the right at the show). They were a big hit! Cake Pops are bite sized pieces of cake dipped in meltable chocolate or candy coating. They are a fun alternative to birthday cake or cupcakes. But they should come with a warning...the sweetness factor is off the charts!

Weekend in Chicago

Last weekend we had the pleasure of spending it in Chicago. I had been there many times for work, but not as a tourist. Of course the food was excellent and the perfect weather made it fantastic to walk around. One of my friends, Richard Bachmann, former proprietor of one of my favourite bookstores, A Different Drummer Bookstore in Burlington, grew up in Chicago's Oak Park...home of Frank Lloyd Wright and Ernest Hemingway. Richard suggested I check out The Chicago Cultural Centre which was originally Chicago's first public library. It was the absoulte highlight of the trip. For those of us who love books it is a true pilgrimage. Although the original library is no longer there, all of the stunning architecture, which is an homage to books, remains. The mosaic tiles have quotes about the love of books from authors. The dome, which is the showcase of the building (and shown above) is the largest Tiffany Dome in the world and is simply breathtaking. So if you happen to be in Chicago, make sure you stop by (admission is free). Oh and my husband met John Cusack on the street...total Chicago moment.

NYRB Challenge #39: To Each His Own. . .

Regardless of whether you want to read Leonardo Sciascia's To Each His Own, translated by Adrienne Foulk, as a detective story, or as an astute and entertaining portrait of a small Sicilian village reacting to two murders, DO NOT read the introduction by W.S. Piero ahead of time.  Darn it all - not only did it reveal the murderer, but also (more unforgivably), gave away the ending of the book.

Manna, the town pharmacist receives an anonymous letter announcing that he is going to die as revenge for something he has done in the past. As he can't think how he's offended anyone, he nervously treats the matter as a joke. Shortly afterwards he's found shot, along with Dr. Roscio, his friend and frequent hunting companion. The murders are the talk of the town - everyone has an opinion, especially about the victims, and - as is slowly revealed - knows more than they are willing to publicly admit.  The police have no clues save a cigar end found at the scene of the crime. But our curious "sleuth" Laurana, a professor of Italian and history at the local high school, can't help investigating, more for his own intellectual enjoyment than to bring the culprits to justice. Common sense, the odd question and above all chance, are what lead him to the truth.  Sort of. As Sciascia writes:

One corrollary of all the detective novels to which a goodly share of mankind repairs for  refreshment specifies that a crime present its investigators with a picture, the material and, so to speak, stylistic elements of which, if meticulously assembled and analyzed, permit a sure solution. In actuality, however, the situation is different. The coefficients of impunity and error are high not because, or not only or not always because, the investigators are men of small intelligence but because the clues a crime offers are usually utterly inadequate. A crime, that is to say, which is planned or committed by people who have interest in working to keep the impunity coefficient high.

This is not one of those mysteries where figuring out the identity of the murderer is the prime joy, or even the point; there are few suspects and it's soon fairly obvious whodunnit. Instead, the pleasure comes in the breezy, cynical style that accepts the town's apathy towards political corruption and religious hyprocrisy as a societal given. Murder is not that shocking after all; daily life continues with a shrug.  Even Laurana comes to see the case as, "detached and distant, in style, form, and also somewhat in content delineated rather in the manner of a Graham Greene novel."  In short, the narrative has a rather cool, crafted sophistication to it, enlivened by an endearing - if naive - main character and the odd, unexpected literary reference.

NYRB has fortunately published a number of Sciascia's works; I enjoyed this novel very much and am lookng forward to reading more from this author.

Send in Some Sondheim. . .

Stephen Sondheim has just turned 80! and the BBC Proms recently had a celebratory concert.  One of the performances was given by the fabulous Judi Dench singing "Send in the Clowns".  She gives such a moving and beautiful rendition, in character from the first note to the very end  - I'm sure you could have heard a pin drop in the theatre.  Treat yourself and watch it here.

And for Sondheim fans - this fall we'll be publishing a wonderful collection of Sondheim's lyrics accompanied by commentary from all phases of his career. The subtitle says it all:  Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes.

Whoa Nellie! . . .

I don't normally go for celebrity bios, but the terrific cover got me on this one!

Okay, if you don't know what animal Bunny was, and if a chapter entitled "The Infamous Wheelchair Episode" doesn't make you chuckle, then Confessions of A Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim is probably not for you.  However, if you grew up - like me - watching every episode of Little House on the Prairie and then repeatedly viewing them in re-runs (my brother and I had an ongoing contest to see who could guess which episode was airing, just from the guest star credits) and years later buying some seasons on DVD, well, this book is even better than getting a tin cup in your Christmas stocking.

Arngrim  played Laura Ingalls' whining, snobbish nemesis Nellie Oleson for seven seasons and her memoir is full of fascinating insights into what went on behind the scenes (her analysis of the characters is really funny - poor Carrie) and what it was like being a child star and living in Hollywood with two self-absorbed parents (they were both Canadian!) also in show business.  Her father who grew up in an orphanage in Saskatchewan was a publicity-obsessed manager who at one point had Liberace as a client; her mother hailed from a wealthy Vancouver family but became famous as the voice of numerous TV characters including Casper the Friendly Ghost and Davy (of that Saturday morning staple Davy and Goliath - now that's a blast from the past). In fact Arngrim writes that she based Nellie's "prissy voice and evil inflection" on "my mother's upper-crust Canadian accent".  But amidst all the surreality of showbiz, Arngrim also offers a sad and gutsy account of surviving her older brother's abuse (he repeatedly raped her from the age of six), and how inhabiting the character of Nellie gave her the strength to confront and speak up about her past.  She also talks honestly and movingly about her close friend Steve Tracy, who played her TV husband Percival Dalton, and his death from AIDS when he was only 32.   Post-Little House, Arngrim has been an activist for both AIDS research and helping children who have been abused. She also works as a stand-up comedienne and given how many times I laughed reading this book, I would love to see her show.

A candid, refreshing but never overly sentimental read.

NYRB Challenge #38: Wedding Woes. . .

Sometimes you start a book and - if you're lucky -  you'll encounter a really unique voice that immediately captures your attention (and heart) and you are prepared to blindly follow it anywhere she takes you.  Such is the voice in Dorothy Baker's wonderful novel Cassandra at the Wedding (and many thanks to Tara at Ottawa Public Library for recommending it to me).

At the start of the novel, Cassandra is planning to return to her family's ranch in preparation for her identical twin Judith's wedding. They've been apart for nine months - their longest separation - since Judith went to study music in New York and Cassie stayed at Berkeley working on her thesis. And here's how she feels about it, looking out of her apartment window at the Golden Gate Bridge:

The bridge looked good again. The sun was on it, and it took on something of the appeal of a bright exit sign in an auditorium that is crowded and airless and where you are listening to a lecture, as I so often do, that is in no way brilliant. But lectures can't all be brilliant, of course; they can be sat through and listened to for what there is in them, and if the exit sign is dazzling is can still be ignored. Besides, my guide assures me that I am not, at heart, a jumper; it's not my sort of thing. I'm given to conjecture only, and to restlessness, and I think I knew all the time I was sizing up the bridge that the strong possibility was I'd go home, attend my sister's wedding as invited, help hook-and-zip her into whatever she wore, take over the bouquet while she received the ring, through the nose or on the finger, wherever she chose to recieve it, and hold my peace when it became a question of speaking now or forever holding it. I'd go, in all likelihood, and do everything an only attendant is expected to do. I'd probably dance attendance.

It's a long quote but it illustrates all of Cassie's youthful tentativeness, tough vulnerability, and imaginative wit. She has conflicting emotions about her sister, her dead mother who was the successful writer she wants to be herself, and her somewhat eccentric and distant father. There's also her sweet grandmother who means well, but has always misjudged the twins - or so Cassie has always thought. The novel charts the few days leading up to the wedding and Cassie's drunken and dramatic attempts to stop it. Her narration is interrupted by a short chapter from Judith's perspective, but this novel belongs entirely to Cassie, and though she finally accepts Judith's decision, there's a devastating moment of confession, in which she realizes exactly what the future will hold for her married sister and it gives her the courage to make that final break.

This is a novel to get gloriously drunk on; I adored every word of it.

Summertime and the Reading is Easy!

I find when it is really hot outside, it is good to go back to some old favourites; they are not very taxing on the brain. This past week I picked up Arthur Conan Doyle's Sign of Four. This edition comes from Broadview Press. I forgot what a drug addict Holmes was...the opening and closing of the book feature his cocaine habit. What i really liked about this edition (and the others in the series) are the great footnotes, introduction and appendices. They give a fabulous opportunity to look beyond the traditional text and look at the context. Two thumbs up!

Fall 2010 Preview: Canlit to Get Your Hands and Holds On. . .

A number of book blogs have been listing some upcoming fall releases ( see here and here and here for example) and there is some great reading to look forward to (some of these are already Dewey picks). However, these are all American sites and while many highlight some great American and international books, there isn't a single Canadian author among them. But even just from the publishers that I represent, I can tell you there's a ton of really exciting books coming in the next few months. Note:  August is the new September - fall starts early in the publishing world and some of these titles will be pubbing very soon.  I've already read a number of these and can thoroughly recommend them; others are definitely on the to-be-read soon pile. If you're heading to the library to stock up on reading for this long weekend, you might want to start getting your advance holds in. At any rate, in alphabetical order, here are some of the Canadian books I'm most excited about this fall:

Fiction

Practical Jean by Trevor Cole
A black comedy about a woman who decides to give her long-time friends a last moment of happiness - and then kill them.  It's out of love though, she just can't bear to see them get old, sick and filled with regrets. A bizarre and oddly moving mediation on the tensions, slights and challenges of friendship.

Apocalypse For Beginners by Nicolas Dickner, translated by Lazer Lederhendler. 

If you loved Nikolski, the recent Canada Reads winner, here's another quirky novel from my new favourite Quebec author. It's a romantic comedy set in 1989, with a bunch of characters all convinced they know the impending date of the Apocalypse.

Tales From An Uncertain Country by Jacques Ferron, translated by Betty Bednarski

It's been a while since a "new" classic has appeared in the New Canadian Library and this collection of comic metaphysical tales looks like fun. I'm particularly looking forward to reading the short story of an Alberta cow's ghost who longs for Quebec.

The Proper Use of Stars by Dominique Fortier, translated by Sheila Fischman

Some of the most interesting Canlit is coming out of Quebec and this is definitely a writer to watch. Everyone thinks they know the story of the doomed Franklin expedition, but it's never been told with so much charm and with so many interesting cultural, historical and poetical digressions. Told mostly from the point of view of Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and his wife Lady Jane, this puts a whole new imaginative spin on the Canadian historical novel. Just have plenty of cups of tea at hand while reading. A film is alreaady in the works.

The Beauty of the Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb
A novel set in contemporary Vietnam involving a young tour guide who takes American vets on "war tours" and a young woman searching for clues about her father's disappearance in the war.

A Man in Uniform by Kate Taylor
I loved Taylor's first novel Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen. In this new book, she returns to the same historical period (and a preoccupation of Proust) and weaves an historical novel around the complicated Dreyfus case that rocked France at the turn of the 20th century.

Sanctuary Line by Jane UrquhartOne of Canada's favourite novelists is back with a multi-generational tale that incorporates three very different love stories, lighthouse keepers, a woman soldier;s experience in Afghanistan and the long migratory flight of the Monarch butterfly.

The Frumkiss Family Business by Michael Wex
There's a lot of humour in Canlit this season which is freshing to see, and this comic family saga seems the perfect example. Any book that bills itself as Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks without the stodgy Germans or The Brothers Karamazov with only one brother, is worth a look. It's also set not far from my own Toronto neighbourhood and many of my colleagues are raving about it.

Bedtime Story by Robert J. Wiersma
A midlife crisis meets the supernatural, as a father with plenty of problems of his own,  has to rescue his child who is quite literally lost in the pages of his favourite book. Sounds like Cornelia Funke for adults, but looks entertaining all the same.

Fauna by Alissa York
Set in Toronto's Rosedale Valley Ravine, this novel is set around a sanctuary to help heal the urban wildlife that no one cares about. And in turn, many broken humans are also encountered. Some of the characters like to quote from Watership Down which has already endeared them to me.

Non-fiction

They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children by Romeo Dallaire
Dallaire is fully committed to eradicating the use of child soldiers worldwide and this book should be extremely powerful and moving.

Mordecai: The Life and Times by Charles Foran
The big literary biography of the season. With the film of Barney's Version also coming out this fall, look for a lovely Mordecai revival everywhere.

The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany  Begins Her Life's Work at 72 by Molly Peacock

I've been a fan of Peacock ever since reading her memoir Paradise, Piece by Piece a number of years ago. This biography of an 18th century widow who at the age of 72 pioneered a new art form - mixed-media collage - and  created over 900 botanically correct collages of cut-paper flowers sounds absolutely fascinating. Peacock writes lustily with a lot of passion and wit and the book itself is gorgeous with many full colour illustrations of Delany's work, now housed in the British Museum.

Arrival City by Doug Saunders
A look at the huge migrations of people worldwide from rural to urban centers and the political, social and economical challenges they are causing for this century.  I read Saunders regularly in the Globe and Mail and think this will be a very intelligent, thought-provoking book.

2010 Man Booker Longlist Announced. . .

And it's out!  And my man David Mitchell is on it - hooray!  Some good seasoned writers on this year's list and nice to see two Canadians - Emma Donoghue and Lisa Moore get a nod. Some of these books are not yet out in Canada but are coming soon this fall.  Get your holds on now! Here's the full longlist:

Parrot and Oliver in America by Peter Carey
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
C by Tom McCarthy

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

February by Lisa Moore

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Trespass by Rose Tremain 

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner

The shortlist will be announced on September 7th.

Fun Literary Caper Skewers the Publishing Industry. . .

Here is the perfect summer read for bibliophiles.

Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer takes on the New York publishing world in this tale of Ian Minot, a struggling writer working as a barista by day, and writing short stories at night about "small people living small lives". He is about to lose his girlfriend - who is on the verge of getting her own collection of autobiographical stories about growing up in Romania published - to an egocentric phony whose own memoir has just hit the bestseller lists.  Then one day Ian encounters "The Confident Man", a bitter ex-editor who haunts the coffee shop and who wants to get his revenge on the industry. He's written a novel about the theft of a precious manuscript of The Tale of Genji from a library that then went up in flames. He suggests to Ian that with a little re-working, the manuscript could be passed off as a memoir - as Ian's own story - and then he could sign a two-book deal that would allow his book of short stories to also be published.  At the appropiate moment, Ian could come clean, but the publicity would ensure not only sales of the two books, but also shame the publishing executives and agent who bought into the scam. The only trouble is that while Ian dreams of fame and money, he's a bit oblivious to the ulterior motives behind the scheme, and soon realizes someone is after not only the manuscript but also his life.  Librarians who know their Dewey Decimal system will have an insider's advantage to figuring out some of the mysteries that unfold, and of course this novel also skewers the recent self-righteous debates and hypocrisy over penning "the truth" in memoirs, directly recalling the controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

This was a rollicking read, punctuated by some clever literary puns (if a little overdone) as Langer effortlessly substitutes writers' names with nouns that can be associated with them. So stylish eyeglasses become "franzens"; trains are "highsmiths" and curly hair is an "atwood". Would-be writers and fans of the literary mysteries of John Dunning will enjoy this one.

Jane Austen Fight Club

Have you seen this hilarious video from You Tube? It's a mash up of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club and the works of Jane Austen.

NYRB Challenge #35-37: Catching Up on Some European Classics. . .

I definitely haven't abandoned my 50 book NYRB Challenge, but I have been forced to slow down a bit, tempted by all sorts of other reading fare and a good chunk of upcoming fall and spring manuscripts. But I do like to dip into the classics over the summer and this seemed a good time to mine the NYRB backlist and tackle some fiction by these three influential authors.

I knew when I started this challenge that I would definitely get around to reading Memoirs of an Anti-Semite: A Novel in Five Stories by Gregor Von Rezzori, translated in part by Joachim Neugroschel. Not only is it one of those books that has been recommended to me many times, but I also wanted the chance to delve further into some of the key works of Eastern European literature. It is a masterfully written dissection of the years leading up to the Second World War (with one epilogue) that portrays the anger, hatred, and despair of that interwar period. The novel consists of five episodes in the narrator's life. He's quite a loner - a man who wants to be an artist but lacks the ambition and discipline. He also gets easily sidetracked by his apathy, and his many jealousies involving both men with more talent, and the women he embarks on affairs with; several of them are Jewish. This is not a portrait of a Nazi in the making, but an unsympathetic and unsentimental depiction of a man very much defined by society's prejudices and his family's own sense of loss after the break-up of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. As a child, he is repeatedly told by his father that character is "troth" (also the title of one of the most powerful sections of the novel), which means loyalty - to a country, a region, or an ideal.  This becomes one of the key conflicts in the novel. What can one do or believe in when not only historical, but cultural boundaries and ways of life are undefined, constantly shifting and changing? Rezzori writes very powerfully and balances a violent tension with the occasional scene of almost absurdist humour.  But most of these sections uncomfortably jolt the reader with a shocking conclusion or observation. An excellent novel.

I've read several plays by Luigi Pirandello, his most famous of course being Six Characters in Search of an Author, and his fascination with ontology also infiltrates his fiction.  In The Late Mattia Pascal, translated by William Weaver, the title character is a man who inadvertently finds himself married to a woman who isn't quite as beautiful as he'd originally thought, and who brings a truly awful mother-in-law to live with them. Escaping his household for a few days to gamble away a small sum of money, Mattia hits the jackpot, not only in the casinos but on his way home, when he reads in the newspaper that a dead body has been found near the local mill and identified as himself.  With his family believing he is dead, Mattia takes his winnings and travels, finally settling in Rome under an assumed name. But the initial freedom he celebrates proves to be illusory and full of complications. If you successfully escape yourself - who then are you? To be or not to be isn't the only philosophical question debated in this novel, but it offers the most laughs. I very much enjoyed reading this entertaining comedy.

The stories in Hugo Von Hofmannsthal's The Lord Chandos Letter and Other Writings, translated by Joel Rotenberg, have a slightly sinister, ethereal feel to them. The characters seem to inhabit dual worlds simultaneously - the real one, and a dream-like one conjured up by an extraordinary and ongoing emotional awareness of not only nature, but the intensity of people's fears, desires and regrets. Death both fascinates and paralyzes, as shown in two haunting stories set among soldiers - "Cavalry Story" and "Military Story". And this culminates in his most famous story "The Letter", in which the narrator laments his inability to articulate these "coded messages" or sensations that he receives:

A watering can, a harrow left in a field, a dog in the sun, a shabby churchyard, a cripple, a small farmhouse - any of these can become the vessel of my revelation. Any of these things and the thousand similar ones past which the eye ordinarily glides with natural indifference can at any moment - which I am completely unable to elicit - suddenly take on for me a sublime and moving aura which words seem too weak to describe.

It's a slightly creepy collection and makes a good companion to Theophile Gautier's My Fantoms which was an earlier challenge read.