Another box o’ books…

Well, it’s happened again…I’ve received another box of books to review (here’s a list of the previous batch, and the one before).

This time they look like a lovely mix: 4 books of short stories, 1 memoir, 1 poetry/novel, 2 novels.

Short Stories

Cobalt Blue by Mary Borsky (Thomas Allen Publishers) — Judging this book by its cover, I’d say it’ll be mighty good. Lovely hand-holding size, good design, a trade paper with useful jacket-flaps. (A note to the publishers — your page for the book didn’t google well.) (Reviewed at Quill and Quire here.)

Silent Girl by Tricia Dower (Inanna Publications) — Wow. A quick google of this book title exposes me to something new, unexpected: A moving book trailer on YouTube.

I’m absolutely flumoxed. Tricia, me girl, that was inspired. I’m now terribly eager to read the book. (Book publishers/authors, take note: this woman knows how to market a book on the Internet!).

Out of Cleveland by Lolette Kuby (Véhicule Press) — A slim book with a very simple, unpretentious cover. I’m a sucker for short stories by women about women, so add that to the author’s background as a poet, I’m looking forward to this collection too.

I must admit, this post is turning into a “Who wins on the Internet marketing front?” — and here’s one that has almost no presence. To get anywhere, you have to put the title in quotes. Publisher — pay attention! I had to search for your site separately! (Hopeless, as web-un-savvy as this group is, they will likely not see this post. Unlike Tricia, above, who will be visiting me shortly, I’m sure!)

Red Rooms by Cherie Dimaline (Theytus Books) — Theytus Books is a small publisher, but all of the books I’ve seen are beautifully designed. I’m a little biased, as this publisher is in my town. Being from them, I do know that the author must be First Nations — and looking at the jacket, the stories are about the “urban Native people.” Another book to look forward to.

Memoir

The Way It Was: Vignettes from My One-Room Schools by Edith Van Kleek (University of Calgary Press) — Beautifully designed cover, readable text, nice heft to the book…I know I’ll enjoy this one. The author wrote notes throughout her career, and her daughter has now edited them into this book. (On the Internet marketing scale, this one doesn’t even rate. Note to authors — don’t expect a university publisher to market your book!)

Poetry/Novel

The Given by Daphne Marlatt (McClelland & Stewart) — I would expect Daphne Marlatt, who’s been writing poetry and novels for years, to have a good publisher (which she does)…and that publisher to have decent web-savvy (and they do). Even with the name of this poetry novel being rather common, the book’s page googled up on the first page. Of course, I’m looking forward to reading this offering.

Novels

The End of East by Jen Sookfong Lee (Vintage Canada – Random House) — I would expect Random House to be up-to-date on the whole web marketing issue, and they are. Search the phrase end of east and it’s the first hit. Well done! 2nd place prize to Random House. The novel itself looks lovely — a generational piece on Vancouver’s Chinatown. Can’t wait.

Living with the Dead by Karen Armstrong (Random House) — Armstrong has a series of her Otherworld books out, and while I’ve not read any (yet), I have heard of her. Random House didn’t do as well for this author, but her own website is informative, listing her books. Bronze medal for web marketing.

I will try to post something other than my first impressions as I read the books. Please feel free to ask me directly for feedback.

And Tricia? Stop and say hi!

Some Canadian Books

I’ve bleated on enough about the last package of books I received to review, so I won’t go into that again.

Without further ado, in no particular order (other than the order they are piled on my desk), here are some Canadian books published in 2008 that you should keep your eyes peeled for:

Anything by Shauna Singh Baldwin. I have in my pile two books of short stories — the re-published English Lessons and Other Stories (with Readers’ Guide), and a new collection called We are not in Pakistan. Both are wonders of cross-cultural exploration, lovely stories of very real people. I see from her website that she has also written two novels…worth checking out.

Under the Holy Lake: A memoir of Eastern Bhutan by Ken Haigh is a highly readable introduction to Bhutan, a country that the average person knows little about. Haigh spent a soul-searching 2 years teaching in Khaling, a small village in the far eastern reaches of an already inaccessible country. This book will leave you with a lasting impression of the country and its people.

Shirin and Salt Man by Nilofar Shidmehr is a book that takes you by surprise. [By the way, a note to all authors...ensure that you or your book has its own dedicated page somewhere -- in the Internet age, you need to stand out and be linked to!] It’s a novella in poetic form, tying the legends of Iran to the modern day. I read it through the first time, fascinated by the poetry and the images; the second time, fascinated by the story; and the third time sent me to the Internet to research the legends of Shirin and the discovery of the Salt Man in the 80s.

I’ll leave you there, with more to come. Plus, I will point out a couple of books to avoid…there are days when I despair at the state of Canada’s publishing! (Do I despair or rejoice in the knowledge that anyone can get published?!?)

The Great White Whale

So, have you read Moby Dick?

I haven’t, and it’s not been on my mental TBR pile either.

Now I don’t have to read it, because over at MadHaiku’s place, he’s done the reading for us, with an illustrated haiku summary to inspire you to read it, or at least see the movie!

I wonder what he’ll come up with next!

Enjoy!

4 Books

Stolen from casa az, who plundered it from alejna

Four childhood books

• Freddy the Pig — don’t really remember much about the books, but that I used to love them. (Animal Farm always sort of freaked me out, with my Freddy background.)
• The Donkey Rustlers by Gerald Durrell. Again, I don’t remember much about the story, but I do remember taking it out of the library again and again.
• Paddington Bear — of course. I think he is the root of my love of the absurd…how can you resist a world where people don’t think twice about talking to a bear in a coat carrying a suitcase full of marmalade sandwiches, with bacon hanging out of it and dogs following him?
• No fourth comes to mind…the Hobbit, the Narnia books — all begun in my childhood, and continued to be read and re-read in my teens, my young adulthood, my middle ages, my dotage…

Four authors I will read again and again

• Robertson Davies (I’m with az here)
• Lois McMaster Bujold
• JRR Tolkien
• Jasper Fforde
• [This is all really quite random...there are 100s (10s?) of authors I would re-read again and again, I could continue this list on to the next page...]

Four authors I will never read again

I blank out the unpleasant in my life. I’ve not much interest in ever reading Dan Brown, Terry Pratchett (sorry az for putting those two in the same sentence), or Stephen King. Authors I don’t like, I just don’t remember.

The first four books on my to-be-read list

• Ulysses by James Joyce (az, alejna and I are threatening to read this together)
• Dante’s Inferno
• Plus a cast of 100s! Too many to list. (Wow. I’m being rather lazy with this one.)

The four books I would take to a desert island

• LOTR
• The complete Shakespeare
• Norton Anthology of Poetry
• a big blank book, with some pens

The last lines of one of my favourite books

• I don’t have any. Sorry to disappoint. Although I may think on this one, and change this some random morning at 4 a.m. when a line pops into my head and won’t let me sleep until I’ve added it here.

Anyway — tag yourselves on this one!

Poetry, read

I’ve ranted on in the past about the quality of the reader making, or breaking, an audio book.  If you’ve ever listened to a tedious reader, you know what I’m talking about. (And no, just because a reader is a famous actor, doesn’t mean that they’re any damn good!)

And I’ve blogged occasionally about poetry. Meant to be read aloud, it is an ideal match to audio, and I think we need to acknowledge a lovely podcast blog today: Classic Poetry Aloud.

Oh, I would admire anyone with the guy’s dedication to posting regular podcasts of themselves reading classic poetry…but I wouldn’t listen to it, if the reading were mediocre.

Mr. Only the Poetry Matters, you read very well. I’m now a fan.

Sekou Sundiata: 1948-2007

I realized this morning that the world had lost yet another artist — spoken word artist Sekou Sundiata. (The Chicago Tribune) [Weird, the editors of Wikipedia waste not time in updating their entries.]

I first heard his work in the Bill Moyers’ book The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets (Here’s a discussion group page.) That book has a companion audio format — I’m not sure which came first, the audio or the book. I, luckily, have both.

Listen to him on Salon Audio, or on the NPR Fresh Air podcast, a compilation of interviews held with him over the years.

Art lives on.

A Beat Education

I found this link ages ago, put it in my blogworthy list, and there it has sat, to wait for a day, like today, when I should be outside, enjoying the sun.

[Living life to the fullest. Thinking new thoughts, maybe even writing some poetry, instead of rehashing other people's ideas. It's Easter Sunday...if nothing else, for this atheist, a day to signal the true beginning of Spring. So, a quick blog post, and then I'm outta here!]

Ginsberg’s Celestial Homework — Your site of the day…essentially a:

Specialized Reading List for “Literary History of the Beat Generation,”
a course taught by Allen Ginsberg at Naropa Institute during the summer of 1977.

This “celestial homework” is the reading list that Ginsberg handed out on the first day of his course as “suggestions for a quick check-out & taste of antient scriveners whose works were reflected in Beat literary style as well as specific beat pages to dig into.”

This is a very great list…with some rather nepotistic choices — many of his contemporaries, like Neal Cassady’s autobiography The First Third. (Cassady had died almost 10 years before, tragically young, so I’m not really surprised by Ginsberg’s choice.)

I think I’m going to grab some poetry and a beer, and sit on the grass to read aloud.

TTFN

Seamus Heaney, it’s about time

Seamus Heaney recently won the TS Eliot Poetry prize.

Haven’t I written about Heaney before now? I know I’ve mentioned him, but I’ve yet to devote a whole post to the man.

So, you haven’t read any Seamus Heaney? Have you heard the man speak? He’s got the most beautiful, rich, rolling voice. I covet his audio recording of his recent re-working of Beowulf (have I mentioned it enough? Will I get it one day?)

Here’s a sample of his image-rich poetry, from the Internet Poetry Archive:

From Clearances

  In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Now go back, and read it aloud. Trust me.

Now, go and hear him read it. And rejoice.

To read aloud…

This bit of Anglo-Saxon pleasure from Earle Birney needs to be read aloud. Some background on Old English Poetry:

Old English poetry was very formulaic, with the same patterns being re-used with variations time and again. Additionally, alliteration and stress were used in the place of rhyme, which can sound strange but powerful to the modern ear. Another striking feature of Old English poetry was the use of many metaphors or kennings for common subjects: The sea could be referred to as the ‘whale’s way’, ‘gannet’s bath’, ’swan’s riding’ and so on.

Or, as the great Seamus Heaney points out when he writes about his task of translating Beowulf:

I had noticed, for example, that without any conscious intent on my part certain lines in the first poem in my first book conformed to the requirements of Anglo-Saxon metrics. These lines were made up of two balancing halves, each half containing two stressed syllables – ‘The spade sinks into gravelly ground: / My father digging. I look down…’ – and in the case of the second line there was alliteration linking ‘digging’ and ‘down’ across the caesura. Part of me, in other words, had been writing Anglo-Saxon from the start.

Wow…a lot of ‘ado’ before I get to the poem for today.

Canadian poet, Earle Birney (1904-1995), probably best known for his long poem, David (I wish there was a link!) — read in many a classroom! One of my favourites is Anglosaxon Street…

A memorable poem, with the rhythms of Old English, some brilliant images, and, yes, some rather strong (ooo, controversy!) language. Here it is:

Anglosaxon Street
by Earle Birney

Dawndrizzle ended   dampness steams from
blotching brick and   blank plasterwaste
Faded housepatterns hoary and finicky
unfold stuttering   stick like a phonograph

Here is a ghetto   gotten for goyim
O with care denuded   of nigger and kike
No coonsmell rankles   reeks only cellarrot
attar of carexhaust   catcorpse and cookinggrease
Imperial hearts   heave in this haven
Cracks across windows   are welded with slogans
There’ll Always Be An England   enhances geraniums
and V’s for Victory   vanquish the housefly

Ho! with climbing sun   march the bleached beldames
festooned with shopping bags   farded flatarched
bigthewed Saxonwives   stepping over buttrivers
waddling back wienerladen   to suckle smallfry

Hoy! with sunslope   shrieking over hydrants
flood from learninghall   the lean fingerlings
Nordic nobblecheeked   not all clean of nose
leaping Commandowise   into leprous lanes

What! after whistleblow   spewed from wheelboat
after daylong doughtiness   dire handplay
in sewertrench or sandpit   come Saxonthegns
Junebrown Jutekings   jawslack for meat

Sit after supper   on smeared doorsteps
not humbly swearing   hatedeeds on Huns
profiteers politicians   pacifists Jews

Then by twobit magic   to muse in movie
unlock picturehoard   or lope to alehall
soaking bleakly   in beer skittleless

Home again to hotbox   and humid husbandhood
in slumbertrough adding   sleepily to Anglekin
Alongside in lanenooks   carling and leman
caterwaul and clip   careless of Saxonry
with moonglow and haste   and a higher heartbeat

Slumbers now slumtrack   unstinks cooling
waiting brief for milkmaid   mornstar and worldrise

Toronto 1942

For your reading pleasure…

I thought I’d share some Al Purdy with you. A powerful Canadian poet, books still available.

Without further ado…

Piling Blood
by Al Purdy

It was powdered blood
in heavy brown paper bags
supposed to be strong enough
to prevent the stuff from escaping
but didn’t

We piled it ten feet high
right to the shed roof
working at Arrow Transfer
on Granville Island
The bags weighed 75 pounds
and you had to stand on two
of the bags to pile the top rows
I was six feet three inches
and needed all of it

I forgot to say
the blood was cattle blood
horses sheep and cows
to be used for fertilizer
the foreman said
It was a matter of some delicacy
to plop the bags down softly
as if you were piling dynamite
if you weren’t gentle
the stuff would belly out
from bags in brown clouds
settle on your sweating face
cover hands and arms
enter ears and nose
seep inside your pants and shirt
reverting back to liquid bood
and you looked like
you’d been scalped
by a tribe of
particularly unfriendly
Indians and forgot to die

We piled glass as well
it came in wooden crates
two of us hoicking them
off trucks into warehouses
every crate
weighing 200 pounds
By late afternoon
my muscles would twitch and throb
in a death-like rhythm
from hundreds of bags of blood
and hundreds of crates of glass

Then at Burns’ slaughterhouse
on East Hastings Street
I got a job part time
shouldering sides of frozen beef
hoisint it from steel hooks
staggering to and from
the refrigerated trucks
and eerie freezing rooms
with breath a white vapour
among the dangling corpses
and the sound of bawling animals
screeched down from an upper floor
with their throats cut
and blood gurgling into special drains
for later retrieval

And the blood smell clung to me
clung to clothes and body
sickly and sweet
and I heard the screams
of dying cattle
and I wrote no poems
there were no poems
to exclude the screams
which boarded the streetcar
and travelled with me
till I reached home
turned on the record player
and faintly
in the last century
heard Beethoven weeping