Category Archives: Reading

Kind words

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I went with a few of the Dirty Girls last night to see a Steven Galloway and Miriam Toews reading. Both writers were humble and insightful and quite wickedly funny. I was already looking forward to reading their new books, and now I’m twice as impatient.

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My favourite moment of the evening, though, was a comment from the audience. A woman near the front of the room stood and talked about how much she loved Gabriel García Márquez, and how she’d always wanted to visit the Columbian towns where he’d “sprinkled his magic.”

I have to admit that at this point I thought perhaps she was a crazy person who was going to monopolize the question period with unrelated topics, but she continued…

She said that as someone from southern Manitoba, it was touching and inspiring to see Miriam Toews sprinkle familiar towns with that same kind of magic, and she was so grateful to the writer for doing so.

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It was such a heartfelt and poignant tribute, especially so because Miriam Toews shows both the light and the dark sides of communities, which can’t always be comfortable for the people who live there.

I think the writer had tears in her eyes.

It was an altogether wonderful evening. Tanya Trafford, thank you for the tickets. I’m sorry you couldn’t get time off work. But there’s a little something on it’s way to you in the mail…

Happy writing and reading, everyone!

Chapter book heartbreak

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Any reading is good reading.

I’ve been repeating this mantra as I tuck my son into bed with his books each night. Because really, there’s much to celebrate. He’s churning voraciously through the Galaxy Zack and Yuck and Melvin Beederman series. Best of all, he’s reading independently, so I no longer have to learn about planets made of candy and spies who get sucked into video games.

Any reading is good reading.

Here’s the problem. For three nights in a row, we read Charlotte’s Web together. On the third night, my son complained. On the fourth night, he refused to read it.

“It’s too boring,” he said.

April 23, 2014: the day my seven-year-old broke my heart. And if E.B. White is looking down from above… well, let’s hope he missed last night’s bedtime routine.

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The introvert’s reward

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When I tuned into The Next Chapter on Saturday afternoon, Shelagh Rogers was interviewing two “exuberant” extroverts. They spoke of wanting to be charged by life, engaged in every moment. They didn’t want to be sitting in the corner, observing instead of experiencing.

Also this weekend, I read parts of Still Writing by Dani Shapiro. I’ve been grazing through this book for weeks. I’ve renewed it twice already, and I think I need to buy my own copy. It’s full of pithy, wise thoughts on the writing life.

Here’s the paragraph that struck me after the exuberance interview:

“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning, and took out a coma,” wrote Oscar Wilde. “In the afternoon, I put it back again.” Let’s face it: most of us are perfectionists. We spend our days searching for the perfect turn of phrase. And we consider this a good time.

Together, these ideas brought me to the following:

Poor Min. He is constantly trying to seize the day, and I’m usually drifting along in his wake, half listening and half wondering how the conversation the two teenagers had (loudly) on the sidewalk in front of our house in the early hours of the morning would translate into a fictional scene.

With my exuberant family members in mind, I vowed to face the rest of Easter weekend with more engaged attention. And succeeded, I think.

But now that the work week has arrived, and with it a little silent, solitary writing time, I’m going to reap my introvert’s reward.

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Teenfest

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On May 10th, I get to discover my inner roar at Teenfest Vancouver, where Eileen Cook and I are participating in a panel discussion about girl empowerment.

I finished Eileen’s latest book on the weekend, Year of Mistaken Discoveries. It’s about a girl who gets blindsided by tragedy, and goes in search of her birth mother as a possible antidote. (I am ridiculously horrible at summarizing plots. This is sort of what the book was about. There was also friendship, romance, ambition, and emotional daring. How can I stuff all that into one sentence?)

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I thought it was Eileen’s best book yet, full of unexpected truths. And as I can tell that Eileen will have plenty to say on our panel, I am now off to get in touch with my empowered side.

Open Secret

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I may never get over the thrill of reading something set in my home town. Or, in this case, in the fictional town of Kootenay Landing, which bears a striking resemblance to my hometown of Creston. It’s so much fun to picture where a character is walking, or imagine the exact view from a hiking trail.

Deryn Collier’s Open Secret is her second novel featuring Bern Fortin, coroner with swag. The book weaves together the lives of a mismatched batch of Kootenay Landing residents, all connected by a disappearance, a grow-op, and a murder. We begin to understand more of Bern’s history and we get to know an array of unique secondary characters. I would have read an entire book about any member of the supporting cast.

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Back to reading about one’s hometown, though. My favourite line of the book is this one:

There was an intake of breath, a barely perceptible pause, when the man walked in, as though the crowd had collectively spotted him, assessed him as an outsider, decided to ignore him, then carried on.

This is a classic small town moment — the micro-pause upon entering a restaurant or bar, while all pre-existing customers check to see whether they know you. It’s generally a benign, even friendly, pause, but it’s noticeable. And if you happen to take your Asian husband to a cafe in Three Mile, Idaho, where apparently no Asian man has gone before, the pause stretches to five or ten seconds and can be rather disconcerting.

Kudos to Deryn Collier for creating a riveting read and capturing the quirks of small-town life.

Circus Dogs review

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Through intense buttering-up of Rachelle Delaney, my daughter recently got her paws on advance proofs of The Circus Dogs of Prague. You may remember that she wallpapered her room last year with posters of the dogs from the Metro Dogs of Moscow. Well, she loved Circus Dogs even more. But I’ll let her tell it in her own words:

Join Pie, Robert, Beatrix, and of course JR, on a trip to Prague with George and his new girlfriend Nadya. At first, JR loves Prague. Cake, Parks, Treats. But then he sees them. Cats. Worse, Nadya has adopted a stray cat! ‘Kisa’ is nothing but trouble. At least, that’s what the dogs thought. But when Nadya’s brother’s circus is going out of business, is it possible that Kisa could save the day? Read The Circus Dogs of Prague to find out.

This book was awesome! I loved how Kisa was kind of unpredictable and sometimes, she was just so nice. Sometimes, she was just trouble!

There you have it. An advance review from JR’s biggest fan.

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One of the best things about staying in a guest house instead of a hotel is the shelf of books that’s always waiting to be explored, complete with trashy romances or experimental poetry or self-help for alcoholics. And no matter what books I’ve brought with me, I always find myself abandoning them for the trash or the poetry or… well, not the twelve-step guides. But everything else!

Here’s the odd collection I went through on Whidbey Island last week:

The Diviners, by Libba Bray, which was fantastic (of course, because who doesn’t love Libba Bray?), but too scary for me. I had to read it in daylight hours only.

The Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri. I don’t usually read short stories. I don’t like how they leave me hanging just after I’ve fallen in love with the characters. And this book is full of the worst kind of frustration, precisely because the stories are so good and I fell so thoroughly in love. I’d happily read a novel based on any one of these tales.

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Better Nate Than Ever, by Tim Federle. I read this at the insistence of my nine-year-old, who was whipping through books faster than I was. It was a silly, sweet, and heart-squeezing story. (My daughter picked this one up from her school library, where the librarian now lets her rummage through the new books before they’re even shelved. I have obviously done well teaching her life’s most important lesson: make friends with your librarian.)

Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets, by Evan Roskos. Is this not the best title ever? And I loved the main character in this book, in all his anxious navel-gazing.

Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo. Last week’s guest house had not only a grown-ups’ bookshelf, but a kids’ one as well. That’s where my daughter found this gem, which I read on our last night away. It was a candy box of perfectly linked stories and characters, tied up with a mildly magical ribbon. A perfect way to end the reading trip!

New views of the mountain

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It took a few attempts to find a copy of Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain to share with my daughter. The school library copy was thrown away, apparently, once it went mouldy!

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Eventually, I got my hands on one and we’ve been happily spending our bedtimes reading about falcon training and bulb digging. This was one of my favourite books when I was a tween, and I love it just as much now. (I’m happy to report that my daughter’s a convert as well.)

Coincidentally, I found this article on Treehugger over the weekend. A My Side of the Mountain/Jetsons mash-up, anyone?

Now on the shelves!

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I got all distracted by curling yesterday and forgot to mention that (insert trumpets and drum rolls) my new book is officially available!

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A big box of 50 Body Questions arrived at my door on Wednesday, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with it.

Where else could you learn about the guy who travelled all over North America displaying the unhealed gunshot wound to his guts, as a doctor dipped bits of food in and out on a string, to demonstrate digestion?

Yup. I’m all about the necessary facts.

Guilt-free reading

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When I was profiled on BC BookLook a couple weeks ago, they mentioned that I’d read 65 books in 2013, and was gunning for 75 in 2014. My first thought when I saw this was:

I put way too much random information on-line.

My second thought was:

Is that a lot? Or a little?

Hang out with a few librarians, and you end up feeling like 65 books is nothing. On the other hand, I received some e-mails like this one:

And I was feeling a little guilty that I’d read 30 books last year. Good luck making it to 75. I’d like to compete with you, but I’m afraid that’s even out of my league.

What it boils down to, of course, is that reading is not a competitive sport. It’s ridiculous to feel guilty about reading too much (is there such a thing?) or too little. We read to explore and to see the world through other people’s eyes. Some books are long and some are short. Some are hard and some are breezy. Some leave us craving more and others leave us needing to rest our hearts and our brains and soak in what we’ve discovered.

I track my books on the 50 Book Pledge because it’s fun, because it keeps me motivated to finish some of those non-fiction tomes that threaten to linger on my end table forever, and because it reminds me to turn off the computer and open my book. Whether or not I make it to 75, I have pages and pages of pleasure ahead of me.