Books in Between: World History and the War for Late Night

What a dink.

Since finishing A Song for Nettie Johnson and before starting The Polished Hoe (not about an experienced prostitute), I read 3 books.

1) McSweeney’s 38

This was my favourite McSweeeney’s I had read yet. The cover was very satisfying and did not fall apart. There was a part about 75% of the way through the book which was clearly a comic strip (or graphic novelization), which I spent 75% of my reading experience excited to get to (not because I love comics, but it was so different, it was bound to be amazing). Then it was a one-joke thing. Still good. It’s card to read graphic comics, because you can zoom through it really fast without really appreciating the pictures if you don’t watch yourself. There was no special sections of writing from a particular country, or stunt formats or anything like that, so it was pretty ordinary, but the quality of writing was very high. Reading about Arabs who serve in the Israeli army caused me to look up the history of Israel on Wikipedia again. The more I learn about Israel, the harder it is to understand what’s going on there. I don’t mean from a moral point of view, I mean I literally don’t understand, mostly why there is so much bulldozing of houses, and then I guess shooting of missiles. And it’s in such a small space and every viewpoint you hear seems very surprised that anyone would react violently to what they’re doing.

Fall Books In-Between

HEY! So I’ve been reading some books.

After finishing Elle I got to read the first McSweeney’s of my new subscription, McSweeney’s 37. It had an unusual shape which was cool:

The only problem as on the inside cover it had a large sleeve to contain a minibooklet, which was 4 chapters of John Sayles’ (the director and also author I guess) book A Moment in the Sun. The sleeve made the whole structure uneven, and the glue came loose in the spinal area. I was annoyed by that.

The good news was that I really enjoyed all the stuff inside the sleeve and the rest of it. I really liked Sayles’ stories of Chilkoot pass during the Yukon gold rush, and I want now to read the whole book, which has many narratives spanning across the U.S. in the year 1899. The book is also beautiful, I saw it displayed in a local bookstore rather prominently and it’s a huge brown tome with really stylized writing in the front.

And Then a Million other Books, Mostly Baseball Oriented, or, Jumbo Books In-Between Part 3

Ok, so somewhere along the way my birthday happened, before the book club meeting, but after I started reading the History of the 20th Century, and at some point I was reading the history book, The Tin Drum, and a book about baseball stadiums all at the same time. It was a confusing time.

For my birthday, I got 4 books about baseball from friends of mine. I didn’t want to get all baseballed out, so I alternated between baseball gift books and the regularly scheduled ones. This is getting complicated, so I’ll just give you a quick rundown of the books I read before Elle by Douglas Glover, which is officially Book 6.

The Tin Drum and the Book Club, or, Jumbo Books-in-Between, Part 2

I recently decided to retire from my job as a driver of food to daycares in the greater Toronto area to focus more squarely on writing, comedy and living the dream. As a first step, I plan on catching up on this blog in the next few days. So, um, watch out.

3) The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass, translated by Breon Mitchell

This is the dude on the cover of the Tin Drum

Where were we? I had just cut a book in three, and was feeling confident, smug even. But then Krista (my beautiful wife) announced that we would be hosting book club this month. I confidently and smugly said that not only would I participate in the hosting of this event, I would read the book as well. Krista had joined a book club along with one of her close friends, who was an actor and had started a book club for other actors or similar artists who had been rejected from more formal book clubs. They had been rejected because they could get a gig and be summoned out of town at any time, and so could not necessarily attend book club meetings with 100% regularity.

My mom is in a book club too. I wouldn’t like to be part of a book club full time, mostly because I have other book commitments, and also a lot of book clubs read mostly book-club-type books, Oprah’s and Heather’s picks, that kind of stuff. Oh, also it’s tough to be in a book club because you have to read a book in a month. Every month.

I’ve Been Reading the Longest Book in the World, Or, Jumbo Books In-between, Part 1

This is something I Bought Earlier this Year, Flush with Cash

Mes amis, since I read The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, I have been on a grand reading adventure, beginning with the great splitting in thrain of a book that I discussed in a previous post, meandering through a book club that I single-handedly ruined, and ending in a cloud of dust in the Houston Astrodome. And in these next couple of posts, I will tell you ALLL about the 6 and one-third books I have read from March to July of this year.

1. McSweeney’s Volume 1 edited by Dave Eggers

For a long time now, whenever I trundle into a Chapters, Indigo or other bookstore while killing time downtown, I have compulsively gone to the section where the literary quarterlies are and looked at, and felt the covers of, the different issues of the journal McSweeney’s, which was started by Dave Eggers in the late 90s and is very whimiscal yet earnest and has had lots of famous authors write in it like David Foster Wallace and, um, Michael Cera.. What drew me was that all of the issues came in different whimsical shapes, some were in a box, some were hardcover with peekaboo covers, one was a newspaper and one was a bundle of mail. I love this kind of shit, but I didn’t want to get it because a) If I got one, I’d have to read them all b) it would interrupt my stringent reading schedule I had gone to great pains to maintain and blog about and c)  I also feel like it has a kind of hipster reputation, like if something is vaguely trendy and ironic, it is “McSweeney’s-approved”. It also might be a bit twee for some people’s tastes.

Holiday Book Roundup!!

For the past two months I’ve been reading books that I got for Christmas from a wide variety of loved ones. Another rule I have now is that whenever I am given a book, I try to read it as soon as possible. This is for two reasons: first, the next time I see them, I can be like, ‘Really enjoying that book!’ or ‘That book you gave me sucks!’ Secondly, that way I don’t add to my List of Books on My Bookshelf I’ve Never Read (currently down to 8 books after years of dedicated reading and ignoring other books that might be more interesting).

Best Friends

Anyway, here are the 4 books I got for Christmas in the order I read them:

1) 100 Photos that Changed Canada edited by Mark Reid, The Beaver Magazine, which is actually a magazine about Canadian history. This was given to me by my sister Megan. At first I was like, okay, photos, whatever, but it’s a really good book that makes you think about what makes a photo important and the kind of influence photos have on a country’s history. It was interesting how many photos I had read about, but never seen, like the famous (in Canadian politics) photo of Robert Stanfield fumbling a football. Some photos were beautiful photos, some were important in the history of Canadian photography, some were photos that influenced people’s opinion, and some were emblematic of an historic event. The only thing I wish had been different is that a lot of the photos take up only a small portion of the page they’re on, or have things overlapping them, because they went to too much effort sometimes to give photos a background that gives the feeling that you just happened to find this photo in a chest of drawers or fallen onto some ice or in a jar of jelly beans. It was a cool effect, but sometimes it overwhelmed the photo itself.

Book in Between: Blink. Also, Book 5 Announced

The band Blink 182 does not get mentioned in Blink

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. I’ve read The Tipping Point, which was great, and I was at the Annette Street Library (my new home branch) and read the first page and got sucked in. That’s Gladwell’s way, he gets you in with stories of mysterious phenomenon and you have to keep reading to get the explanation, which adds to his central idea. It also makes you think the book has changed the way you look at life – but does it?

The idea of this one is that your unconscious mind makes a lot more decisions, and more quickly, than we might think. This jives with my personal strategy lately to try and not fight my instincts, and to do what I want to do. Not in the sense of playing video games and eating ice cream all the time, but to actually work towards the goals I want to accomplish, instead of doing what I think I should be doing.

Anyway, Blink is a super fast read and I’ll probably get Outliers from the library, and learn to be extremely successful. Next we have 3 candidates for book five:

1,2 = North = Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002

3,4 = East = The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji, Giller Prize 2003

5,6 = South = I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright, Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2004

I rolled a 4 (again!), and so it’s into the world of Canadian Fiction with M.G. Vassanji

Book 3.5: Anna Karenina: Parts 1-3

How Can I Better Use My Peasants? and other important questions asked in Tolstoy's classic Anna Karenina

Just finished Part 3 of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, I am on page 380 of a 870 page copy.

I ended up buying the book used, this option having the best combination of cheapness and it also allows me to keep the book for a long enough time to read it, plus all the other pros I mentioned in my last entry. The copy I got is from the 70s (I think), a hardcover that is coloured green along the tops of the pages. I took off the dust jacket so I could more easily transport it around in my backpack, and the naked book cover has the initials “A K” and a little picture of Anna holding an umbrella, which I quite like. The used bookstore I went to was having a half-off sale, and I got it for ten bucks.

Books In Between: Dusting Off Some Ol’ Classics

Hello, reader of my blog

I know you are thinking that this is going to be one of those blogs that gets infequently updated, then updated yearly, then not at all. You couldn’t be farther from the truth.

You could be farther from the truth, I admit, but overall, you’re wrong. But this is why: As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I’m currently reading The Playwright’s Guidebook, by Stuart Spencer, which my old University pal Allan gave me when we were still in University. It took me a long time to get to it, but I am now at a time in my life where I am more receptive than I used to be to advice on how to write, so I think it was fate. So far very helpful, and I’ll write a little more about it when I’ve finished the book.

Anyway, on page 43 of the book, the author mentions A Streetcar Named Desire, and then in a footnote at the bottom of the page suggests my reading experience would be helped by picking up some required reading, listed in an appendix at the back of the book. This was problem one: although I was keen to continue on with my Epic Project of the Booklist, I feel guilty if I am missing out on some Required Reading. So I had to embark on a mini-project.

I also ran into a second problem in that this book had exercises, involving writing scenes. I couldn’t do that on the subway or in bed as I drifted off to sleep, so not only did I have these exercises (which I didn’t feel I could skip, or I’d be missing out on the experience of the book) disrupting my normal everyday life, I had to figure out something else to read while I was waiting for a good time to write the exercise, which I had to complete before continuing on with the Guidebook.

Book Three Announced; Also, Books in Between

The 3 options for book 3, following Vernon God Little, were as follows:

1,2 = East = Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize 2003

3,4 = South = The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, Booker Prize 2004

5,6 = West = J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize Winner 2003

I rolled a 2, so I will be reading Middlesex next after Vernon God Little. Sources tell me it is an excellent book.

Review for Vernon God Little is upcoming.

In between Life of Pi and Vernon God Little I read the following: