The Joy of Reading a Magical Book!

If I Were a Book will bring the sense of wonder alive for readers and that's why I love it. Let your imagination go wild! This was my fave book of the season. You can download an awesome poster for this book for free here!

What We're Reading This Holiday Season

I know how I'll be spending my holidays (that is, when I'm not partaking in all the delicious food and festivities). I'm giving my "To Be Read" pile some attention! I asked my fellow Deweys what's on their "To Be Read" piles and this is what they said:

                                    Lahring:                                      

Wake by Anna Hope
(Random House)

Tim:

I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

(Little Brown & Company)

Laureen:

HYDE by Daniel Levine 

(Houghton Mifflin Harourt)

Rosalyn:

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

(Reagan Arthur Books)

Saffron:

The Paris Architect: A Novel

by Charles Belfoure

(Sourcebooks)

Margot:

The Devil I Know by Claire Kilroy

(Grove Atlantic)

Janet:

TransAtlantic by Colum McCann

(Random House)

Caught by Lisa Moore

(Anansi)

How to Get Along With Women: Short Stories 

By Elisabeth de Mariaffi

(Invisible Printing)

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 

(Little, Brown and Company)

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes 

(Knopf)

The Circle by Dave Eggers

(Knopf)

The Dewey Divas and Dudes Top 5: Pamela's Picks!

I hope after all these reading suggestions your To Be Read piles are rapidly growing by now! My next list comes from Pamela Frick, a former public librarian who has been working as an adult selections specialist with Whitehots for the last two years. For Pamela, compiling this list was very difficult as she is very close to reading 100 books this year! Here are Pamela's picks:

1. The Orenda by Joseph Boyden (Penguin)

"An important, beautiful and sometimes horrendous novel of Canada’s First Nations history, as told by a masterful Canadian storyteller."

2. The Baroness: The Search for Nica, the Rebellious Rothschild by Hannah Rothschild (Knopf)

"Combining for me my love of reading and jazz is this biography of Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koeigswarter (nee Rothschild), also known as Nica, the Jazz Baroness, told against the backdrop of her family history and the events of the twentieth century."

3. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (Morrow)

"Gaiman confronts the disparate views of adults and children as the narrator revisits the scenes of his childhood."

4. Transatlantic by Column McCann (HarperCollins)

"Seldom does a book bring me to tears but there was a moment in the final chapter when I was very close." 

5. Mr. Seldon's Map of China by Timothy Brook (Anansi)

"Brook gives us a brief view of England and China (also other trading nations such as The Netherlands and Spain) but concentrates more on the possible provenance of the map."

The Dewey Divas and Dudes Top 5: Mike's Picks!

Representing East Side Canada, I asked Mike Hamm from Bookmark Inc. in Halifax. If you're visiting Halifax, you should definitely visit this beautiful little independent bookstore. Mike's descriptions alone make me want to read these books! Here are his picks:

1. The Orenda by Joseph Boyden (Penguin)

"As an already devoted fan of Boyden, I was so very hungry for this book. Once finished, I had the feeling that this was another instant Canadian classic. Never have I been so immersed in the geography of setting. The writing is again incredibly assured and magnificent."

2. The Misfortunates by Dimitri Verhulst (Portobello Books Ltd) 

"A Belgian Dutch writer recounts the lives of a family of brothers who drink, watch TV, carouse, fight, sleep and then drink some more and the one son who sees the possibility of a world outside his uncles' influence. For those who love the gritty realistic humour of Roddy Doyle. And amazing insights into human nature."

3. The Dinner by Herman Koch (Hogarth)

"A small story in terms of locales and the characters' physical movement but huge in it's discussion of responsibility and parenting. The central mystery of the novel, largely revealed as two couples meet in a high end restaurant, has a very sad connection to an actual recent event in my province of Nova Scotia. For this reason among many others, The Dinner has resonated greatly with me this year."

4. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (Hogarth)

"War-time atrocities are uncovered in a ravaged Chechnya as an urban doctor and small town widower take on the care of a frightened young girl. The subject matter is dark and emotionally challenging but this is a writer of singular talent. There are paragraphs that stopped me in my tracks. I let them wash over me and then I reread them. At times like these, I marvelled at the terrible beauty of Marra's words."

5. The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence (Redhook)

"For those of you who adore Mark Haddon and enjoyed The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry, this is the book for you. A meteorite crashes through the roof of young Alex's house, he suffers a resultant coma but ends up gaining the friendship of a crotchety yet caring elderly man. Through Alex's encounters with bullying, euthanasia and a Kurt Vonnegut bookclub, this book's sheer magic shines through. And who can deny the literary greatness of this author's name!"

The Dewey Divas and Dudes Top 5 Books: Linda's Picks!

Let's continue with our Top Books of 2013! These recommendations have been very helpful to me so far, reminding me of those books that have fallen off my radar, and helping me out with those tough-to-buy-for people on my list. Next, I called on Linda Ludke, librarian and children's materials selector of the London Public Library. As a trusted book lover, I knew I could count on her for some fantastic titles and this time we are starting to see some repeats (they must be that good!). Here are Linda's picks:

1. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (St. Martin's Press)

"This swoon-worthy book brought me back to a time when love often blossomed with the exchange of a mix tape. I would sit with these characters on a bus trip any day." 








2. The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toren (Doubleday)

"I liked how Adam wasn’t just defined by his OCD- he was also a teen in love, a son dealing with divorce.  It was very realistic and at times laugh-out-loud funny."








3. Jane, the Fox and Me by Fanny Britt, Illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault (House of Anansi)

"There are so many beautifully created, quiet scenes in this graphic novel that pack an emotional wallop. Arsenault’s illustrations are as eloquent as ever."

4. Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan (Penguin)

"Willow Chance’s story of grief and loss and love is so incredibly touching.  She is a character I kept thinking about long after I put the book down."

5. That is Not a Good Idea by Mo Willems (HarperCollins)

"This book is a silent movie that stars a dastardly fox villain, a wide-eyed ingénue goose and an audience of wing-flapping chicks. Mo Willems’ comedic timing is brilliant."

Bardolatry. . .

In honour of Shakespeare's birthday coming up this weekend, I'll be starting Arthur Phillips' new novel The Tragedy of Arthur which stars a man named Arthur Phillips whose family just may have in their possession an undiscovered play by Shakespeare (all five acts included in the text) and whose father - a con man - wants to get it published, by Random House no less.  My critic boyfriend Michael Dirda cheekily reviews it in the Washington Post here. It looks terrific and I enjoyed some of Phillips' previous novels, in particular, Prague and The Egyptologist.

A Man of Parts (Some More Active Than Others). . .

I'm currently reading and enjoying a galley of David Lodge's new novel A Man of Parts which will be available in Canada in May.  It's a fictionalized account of the life of H.G. Wells, told mostly through his relationships with the women in his life, many of whom were writers, including the amazing Rebecca West, the modernist Dorothy Richardson, Violet Hunt (who famously had a long relationship with Ford Maddox Ford and appears as a character in two of his most celebrated novels) and Elizabeth von Arnim who wrote one of my favourite NYRB Classics, The Enchanted April.  Gotta love these incestuous literary circles.

Lodge has a great piece in The Guardian, talking about how and why he wrote this novel, the difficulties of writing fiction about real historical characters, and the connections that can be made to another of my favorite books about this period - A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book.  Well worth reading.  I think I'll have to dig out some H.G. Wells too. Orion is bringing out some of his backlist - in these great new covers; who says that print (or newsprint) is dead?

Spring 2011 Preview or my Very Large To Be Read Pile. . .

The long weekend couldn't have come at a better time.  I have an enormous pile of books, galleys and manuscripts of upcoming books that are all calling out to me.  I've posted my Spring Dewey Picks on the sidebar at the right. These were mostly read last fall and over the xmas holidays and I also have to add Anne Enright's new novel Forgotten Waltz which is fantastic - a very sexy novel about a destructive adulterous affair, set against Dublin's economic rise and fall of the last few years.

But in that very brief respite before I have to turn my attention to the fall books, the rest of the spring crop is tantalizing me. There's no way I'll be able to get through even a portion of all these books and I have no idea where my weekend whims will take me, but here's just a partial list of what I'd love to get through if I could stop time. Again, many of these have not yet been published, so there's plenty of time to get your name at the top of the library holds list or start a shopping list of your own.  Hope you are as excited about some of these titles as I am.

Irma Voth by Miriam Toews.   I'm a big fan of Toews, and I was lucky enough to see her film debut in the art movie Silent Light, directed by Carlos Reygadas  (see more info and trailer here) . I'm sure she's brought some of her film set experiences to bear in this new novel about a young Mennonite woman and her encounters with a film crew who are making a movie about her community.

Man of Parts by David Lodge.  Another favourite writer and in this new novel, he's re-imagined the life of H.G. Wells and his relations with the many women in his life, including the amazing Rebecca West who should be far better known and read than she is.

The Paris Wife by Paula McCain.  Another fictional novel about writers. In this case it's Ernest Hemingway and his circle of friends in 1920s Paris, narrated by his first wife Hadley.

The London Train by Tessa Hadley.  I loved Hadley's previous novel Everything Will Be All Right and I do have a train fetish, so any novel set on trains immediately gets my attention. The novel is about two journeys that will intersect.  Paul travels from Wales to London in search of his adult daughter who has gone missing in the city. Cora is going the other way, from London to Wales, back to the house she has inherited from her parents while escaping her marriage. Beautiful cover too.

Fred Vargas is back with another Commissaire Adamsberg mystery called An Uncertain Place. This one actually starts off in London as he and his colleagues go to the city to attend a conference and get caught up in the case of a pile of shoes  - with severed feet inside them - found outside Highgate Cemetery.  How this will lead to a trail of vampire hunters in Serbia, I have no idea but I completely trust Vargas to deliver another masterfully plotted book.  Henning Mankell is also back this spring with his final Wallander novel, The Troubled Man.

Seven Years by Peter Stamm, translated by Michael Hofmann.  I've read two of this Swiss writer's previous novels (On A Day Like This, and Unformed Landscape, both translated by Michael Hofmann) and this novel about a love triangle sounds wonderful.  My favourite love stories always seem to be European these days.

The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips.  Lahring has already read this and has been strongly recommending it to me. It's one of her Dewey picks (also check out her other favourites on the sidebar). This promises to be a clever bit of metafiction involving a main character called Arthur Phillips, a con artist father, a twin sister, a family love of Shakespeare and yes, a lost play found that may or may not be by the Bard.  The entire five act play - The Tragedy of Arthur - is also included in the novel. I'm always intrigued to see what Phillips comes up with next; he certainly doesn't write the same book twice. I think of him as an American Jonathan Coe, which from me, is high praise indeed.  I loved Prague and the bold storytelling of The Egyptologist, and I really must make the time to read his last one as well, The Song is You.

Also on the fiction pile: 

The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Michael Emmerich - a quirky love story about a young woman trying to help her partner escape his cult past by a beautiful and mysterious lake.

The Curfew by Jesse Ball.  My U.S. colleagues have been raving about this dystopian novel about a man and his young daughter living in a city of fear.
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht. Tons of buzz already about this debut novel about a woman seeking the truth about secrets in her family's past.
Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? by Johan Harstad, translated by Deborah Dawkin.  I know all the focus is on their crime fiction, but Scandinavia has produced some darn fine literary writers as well. I'm always interested in being introduced to new ones - this novel looks like a lot of quirky fun. A young man tries to escape his personal and professional disasters on the Faroe Islands. Buzz apparently will also make an appearance.

Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away by Christie Watson.  One of my colleague's favourite spring books - she says this novel set in Nigeria and narrated by twelve year old Blessing as she assists her mid-wife grandmother, has a terrific voice and is very reminiscent of Chris Cleave's Little Bee.

Irretrievable by Theodor Fontane, translated by Douglas Parmee.  The story of a long time marriage that slowly drifts apart. Another NYRB Classic find.

The Astral by Kate Christensen - the mid-life crisis of Harry Quirk, a poet dealing with literary, marital, financial and parental failures.  I expect a lot of wry humour in this one.

Potsdam Station by David Downing - thriller set in the last days of WWII in Berlin.

All the Time in the World by E. L. Doctorow - short stories.

Games to Play After Dark by Sarah Gardner Borden.  My U.S colleagues compared this debut novel about the destruction of a marriage, to a modern day Revolutionary Road.

 And finally, there are two non-fiction manuscripts on the pile that I think will be important reading to understand, debate, engage with and react to all the changes and challenges going on in the book industry and infiltrating their way also into education and culture.  Basically, I need a little optimism to hold on to and hope to find it in these two books.

This Is Not the End of the Book by Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière.  From the book's description:

"These days it is almost impossible to get away from discussions of whether the ‘book’ will survive the digital revolution. Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles on the subject appear daily, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting they don’t know what will happen. Amidst the twittering, the thoughts of Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco come as a breath of fresh air.  There are few people better placed to discuss the past, present and future of the book. Both avid book collectors with a deep understanding of history, they have explored through their work the many and varied ways ideas have been represented through the ages.This thought-provoking book takes the form of a long conversation in which Carrière and Eco discuss everything from what can be defined as the first book to what is happening to knowledge now."

The Use and Abuse of Literature by Marjorie Garber.  This is also an examination of literature and reading in the digital age from a prolific writer, and I like this bit on the jacket copy: "Garber’s winning aim is to reclaim literature from the margins of our personal, educational, and professional lives and restore it to the center, as a fierce, radical way of thinking."  Amen to that!

So that should be plenty to be getting on with.  .  .

Beautiful Books. . .

In the midst of all the panic about e-books and how they might herald a crisis in the book industry, I'm always looking (and perhaps more crucially now) to celebrate beautiful print books and publishers who are still coming up with some creative ways to package and design books so that they remain valuable objects that real bibliophiles will always lust after. Case in point is Melville House which I blogged about here.

But I've also recently discovered Visual Editions, a new British publisher devoted to exploring creative ways to play with text, and I immediately ordered both of their inaugral books, which I can confirm are every bit as beautiful to hold as they look in the photos.  The first is an edition of the perfect book to experiment with - Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, in which visual elements were used to "highlight and exaggerate what Laurence Sterne intended when he first wrote Shandy."  You can see some of the pages here.   I love it!

The second is The Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer.  This is just the coolest thing ever.  He's taken one of his favourite books - Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles (which I also ordered and will read first) and actually cut away letters and words to carve out his own separate story.  Check out pages (and a video of readers' reactions) here.

And then I'm loving this set of 50 Mini Modern Classics that Penguin UK has put out to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Modern Classics line.  They can be bought separately or in this classy box set and consist of novellas or small collections of short stories. You can see the full list of titles here (and the guinea pig they use in their promotional book trailer is pretty cute).  I will certainly be getting my hands on two stories about addiction by Hans Fallada, published under the title Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism. Here's a line from one of them:

…I stare at the coffee I poured myself, and I think: caffeine is a poison that stimulates the heart. There are plenty of instances of people killing themselves with coffee, hundreds and thousands of them. Caffeine is a deadly poison, maybe almost as deadly as morphine. Why didn’t it ever occur to me before: coffee is my friend!