humph.

According to this blog, we can now assume that Dean Priest is one of the great antagonists of children's literature.

It might be rebuttal time.


We shall see.

Arturo Perez-Reverte Rocks my SOCKS

-just returned from fantastic trip to the East Coast ( PEI PEI !!! )

-there really is a Priest Pond ( home of Dean Priest in ...wonderful)

-I am now a member of the LM Montgomery Land Trust ( PRESERVE PEI! )

-I am a slacker who never writes in her blog

-I love Somerset Maugham

-the Captain Alatriste series is very very worth it.....finished Captain Alatriste and Purity of Blood in Nova Scotia. Now reading the latest Sun over Breda. According to imdb.com there is a Captain Alatriste movie that has been shown already in Spain with Viggo Mortensen. Hope we get it here.

back to real life.

shows over. was a tremendous success. got very little sleep. loved singing half of "In His Eyes" every night.

now, I am reading a book.


so.... a treat

some Man of La Mancha lyrics!

DON QUIXOTE (Smiling, sill keeping his eyes averted) Did my lady think to put me to a test? Ah, sweet sovereign of my captive heart. I shall not fail thee, for I know... I have dreamed thee too long, Never seen thee or touched thee. But known thee with all of my heart.
Half a prayer, half a song, Thou hast always been with me, Though we have been always apart. Dulcinea... Dulcinea... I see heaven when I see thee, Dulcinea, And thy name is like a prayer An angel whispers... Dulcinea... Dulcinea!
If I reach out to thee, Do not tremble and shrink From the touch of my hand on thy hair. Let my fingers but see Thou art warm and alive, And no phantom to fade in the air. Dulcinea... Dulcinea...
I have sought thee, sung thee, Dreamed thee, Dulcinea! Now I've found thee, And the world shall know thy glory, Dulcinea... Dulcinea!

film.

Amazing Grace is a fantastic movie.

Won't be updating a lot in the next few weeks because I play a lead role in ANOTHER literary adaptation; that of Jekyll and Hyde the musical version.

some good ARC'S

For those of us in the book biz, ARC stands for Advanced Reader's Copy.

I landed some fun today!


Ironside by Holly Black ( incidentally, I just finished Valiant and Tithe

the new NEIL GAIMAN ( a collection of short stories for release this summer )

Pendragon 8 ---the name which escapes me right now.



good times. good reads.

desert island.

Okay, unexpectedly ( and largely due to facebook and my part in the Spring Musical in my town ), I have been absent. I also joined two committees and finished my role as reader for a Canadian literary award.


That being done, and wanting to come back with a *bang! *, here I am again----with some desert island picks.


I have been skulking in the blogger background and reading some people's memes about the books they cannot live without.

I could never choose five ( are you kidding ) , or ten ( too low, still ) and so fifteen was a challenge for me:


but here it is:


DRUM ROLL:


FIFTEEN BOOKS I WOULD NEED WITH ME/CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT/WOULD DIE SHOULD THEY FALL FROM MY HANDS


In no particular order:

1.) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo--- the size itself would keep my happy for a long while.

2.) The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery----Barney has an island. Perchance if I am stuck on an island he will show up....wishful thinking.

3.)Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte ----funny thing is, from a literary standpoint, I always list Villette as my favourite of her works and one of my top five books, but I cannot imagine being stranded without Thornfield or Rochester

4.)Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen-----we deserted castaways need something representative of Austen, so this is my pick of her works. It is my representation of the whole Austen canon, if not my personal Austen favourite.

5.) The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain ----I love this book. It makes me laugh, it makes me cry. It has that uncanny ability to capture Twain's humorous heart, acts as a perfect YA novel ( we all know how I love those ) and is a riproaring representative of the historical fiction genre.

6.)Vienna Prelude by Bodie Thoene---- not a great work of literature, no. But, it is my Christmas book ---and even we marooned on islands need to celebrate the holidays.

7.) The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ---Do not try to tell me this doesn't count because it acts as a range of different stories....they all come in the same friggin' book . I sell many editions that boast the "Complete" works. So there. It's in!
No cheating.

8.) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens---Once again, this is a tough choice because Our Mutual Friend is probably my favourite of all things Dickensian. However, GE and I have the most history and we go the furthest back. And, like Austen, I feel it is a good representation of his tone, voice, setting....tis a complete package


9.) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell ---- I need Mr. Thornton. I need Mr. Thornton


10.) Christy by Catherine Marshall. Girl moves to the Smokies in the early 20th Century to teach school to the mountain people and live at a mission there. Upon arrival, she meets two fascinating men who both fall equally in love with her. Every girl's dream.


11. ) According to Jake and the Kid by W.O. Mitchell ----- We outcasts need to laugh and The King of All Country remains one of the funniest short stories in my memory. Further still, the Canadian content on my island needs to be maintained.


12.) HMS Surprise by Patrick O'Brian---- Picking one Aubrey/Maturin book out of the lot is a dismal prospect, but, being thus so, I cho-cho-choose this one !

13.) The Stargazey by Martha Grimes ---You think for one second I would go to my island without Melrose Plant. Humph!

14.) Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers ---- theologically intuned, romantically sprawled amidst gothic spires, lots of Wimsey and that brilliant, fiesty, feminist Harriet Vane, I am packing her in my bag!

15.) Horatio Lyle by Catherine Webb ----a recent acquistion, I have only been Lyle's acquaintance for a year, but he is the embodiment of everything that makes YA literature my passion. Funny, smartly written, filled to the brim with eccentric characters that make my heart leap---and all by a 19 year old.



Hope the hiatus is over. If anyone still reads this, welcome back.



OH ------------and by the way!!! The Lies of Locke Lamora is BRILLIANT !

I am getting the ARC for the second one and anxiously check my mailbox everyday!

bsg.

I have not been reading ( SHOCK! GASP! GACK! EEP! )

because I have been watching an insane amount of Battlestar Galactica ( thanks to my friend James; the stage manager of the musical I am in ).

In essence, it is so brilliantly written, cleverly told and currently relevant, that it is like sinking into a good book.

I do not condone tv as a substitute for literature, but every once in awhile, it is nice to have some escapism.

paris.

If I were in charge of Canada, February 22nd, birthday of one Mr. Morley Callaghan, would be a national holiday.

As the only thing I am in charge of is a little corner of the universe in a little bookstore, I will have to sit here, chin in hand, and ponder the greatness of one of my favourite canuck authors.


Morley Callaghan would have been 100 years old today. And what a jam-packed century he would have had. He already filled more than a lifetime usually allots in the first fifty years. His best writing was done when he was young, his greatest adventures played out mighty early, and all of his literary flings and acclaims came at a young age.



Yes, I have romanticized Morley's early years, what with their splash of Parisian panache ( and what with his clobbering of Ernest Hemingway---- don't make me get into the climax of That Summer in Paris as a Canadian literary metaphor again ), but he defines a golden age of sorts for me. I envision him wandering aimlessly around 1920's Toronto---every snippet of his life reading out of the pages of his novel, A Varsity Story. I imagine him, as I often was, curled up in one of the red leather chairs of the Hart House Library at U of T and looking over the courtyards and spires, slightly interrupted by the pealing of the tower bell.

And then, there is Paris and Morley's dappling into the lives of the Literary Elite. He defines Paris for me. Whenever I think of it with its dazzling life, parties and pizazz, I rarely think of anything I did not read of in the pages of Callaghan's autobiography. Forget We Were all so Young or A Movable Feast. Canadians had their own agent in the flapper years!

Further, my personal conceptions of Fitzgerald, James Joyce and ( especially ) Hemingway, are solely accumulated from Callaghan's perspective. Far be it for me to take anyone else's word on how these literary giants were. Morley Callaghan's word is the definitive one.


Finally, there is the sense of melancholy I feel when I leaf through his brilliant short stories ( soaked in Catholic consciousness and always sewn together with bittersweet nostalgia) and re-read his colourful memoir. I pine for his life lost as if I personally had lived it.

What an author is that who paints life so acutely you feel its triumphs and travails!


Tonight I am at a dinner celebrating Callaghan with a speaker who knows his works more intimately than any of his many admirers could hope for. I am excited and invigorated and anxious to experience That Summer once more.

awol.

I have been busy and boring and facebook is eating my brain.


So, I have decided to send you to other blogs as a little field trip, just until I finish reading the jaw-droppingly awesome The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch which may require a second read.

Hey! Scott Lynch! He has a blog. Go visit it.


And because every day should be a national CC Humphreys appreciation day, you should read his blog too.


Not done? How about newbie blogger Simon Scarrow.
In his profile, he lists I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith as one of his favourite books. Enough said.

I love that authors are jumping on this bandwagon.


Promise to be more diligent. But I have reviews to write and people to see !

snow.

Okay. My town has a lot. The banks are taller than I am in places, and I am 5"9 so that is not always fun.


Here is a reader update.

I have recently discovered FACEBOOK and it has devoured all of my blogging time.


Grania by Morgan Llywellen ( which I know I spelled wrong ). Tells the story of Grace O'Malley the pirate queen paralleling her with Elizabeth I. I read it in an afternoon on the weekend. It is exciting and fun. I loved Tigernan the secretly adoring ship's mate.
( the fact that the latest musical by Boubil/Schonberg entitled the Pirate Queen is almost in previews has had no influence on my recent Grace O'Malley splurge ;)

They Shall Inherit The Earth by Morley Callaghan. One of his better novels I would have to say. I love Morley Callaghan, but his later novels are disastrous. This is one of the first so it was well within the reign of his highest genius.


The Hydrofoil Mystery by Eric Walters. Eric is arguably one of my favourite YA discoveries. He never writes without purpose or the exploration of something scintillating, relative, challenging or new.

Our 15 year old gambling protagonist lands a job at Alexander Graham Bell's Nova Scotian estate in Baddeck. There, he helps unravel a dangerous plot to unfurl every teensy secret about Graham Bell's latest invention: a hydrofoil watercraft that will foil the best laid German uboat plans and rule the waves with its breakneck speed.

Americans always appropriate Graham Bell, but he spent a lot of time in Nova Scotia. I am happy that Canadians are changing the tenuous relationship surfacely seen in our relationship with him and digging deeper into his roots here.



I am very excited about reading The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. It should arrive any day. It was a novel that started on a blog that has been recently optioned for film. Sounds beautiful.


Saw the BBC adaptation of Pullman's The Ruby in the Smoke the other night on Masterpiece Theatre. Garland was exactly how I pictured him. Not a strong screenplay despite the excellent source material.

ick.

I hate filling out grad school applications.


So, I have not finished a book lately because I have been tapping away at statements of purpose.


Here is what I am just starting: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

It is gorgeous.


And here is what I will NOT be reading anytime soon, thank you very much:

The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

genre-stretching.

Okay. Here is a weekend roundup:


The Painted Veil by a relatively new discovery of mine, W. Somerset Maugham, is the perfect thaw to the January chill. Sure, its erudite tragedy unfurls so subtly its climax catches your heart , but the denouement ( a doctor and his unfaithful wife discovering almost absurd grace in Cholera- ravaged China ) is worth a ride.
Walter Fane has not let go of me since I first read of him. The consummate silent mourner, the affair his beautiful (and much loved wife ) betrays him with, cuts deeper than I would have initially thought.
In a catapulting joint suicide-pact, they fall in love ( Walter once more, Kitty for the first time ), amidst illness and strife. Trust Maugham to paint a love story in its perverse " Love in the Time of..." way.




Loving Will Shakespeare by Carolyn Meyer


A renowned historical novelist for the teen age, Meyer crafts a winsome and believable Stratford-Upon-Avon in the years when it housed a budding poet and the comely older girl he would eventually fall for. Setting the stage for an almost preternatural courtship, Will ( a fiesty performer ) and Agnes ( Anne as he likes to call her ) attend the same grammar school and engage in light conversation.

Virginia Woolf ponders "If Shakespeare had a sister...." and this one does. A sister, a mother, a father a thatched-roof house and an existence in a middle-class family of glovemakers , neighbours to the Hathaways. Narrated by Agnes, the tale takes us to the Black Death, the esteemed visit of Elizabeth I to Robin Dudley's castle, and through the heated attraction of Agnes to a swarthy farmhand.

Not lasting literature, in my opinion, and sprinkled with obvious cliches ( Will compares Agnes to a Summer's day) it is nonetheless a picturesque portrait of early Elizabethan England framing two unlikely lovers and setting the stage for the world's greatest playwright.


Dust by Martha Grimes

It is hard to know how best to whet your insatiable Grimesian appetite. Do you gobble in a quick devour, do you slowly chew unthreading the plot by each, colourful and humorous string?
After finishing a Grimes completely satisfied, cliffhanger or not, I bound about in a euphoria I reserve for very few things. The blast of a Jury/Plant romp hits with jubilant force--- I laugh, sometimes tear, and burst on each page with wide-eyed wonderment. To say nothing of her prose ( carefully calculated strokes of a master brush), her palatable wit, her literary flair (Dust is set partly at Lamb House, oft occupied a century ago by Henry James.... and where he penned Golden Bowl, Wings and Ambassadors) and her characters.


Melrose Plant. Melrose Plant. Melrose Plant:

As says The Stargazey: "Melrose smiled his special smile, the one he was not wholly conscious he had, but it was as fetching as the smile of a very young child. It was, like the work of Matisse, Vuillard, and Van Gogh, the real thing on offer. It invited you in"

Melrose and art intertwined. Synonymous, in my opinion.
The kind of character that makes me want to be an author. Remaining one of the greatest discoveries of my literary life. So real, visceral, engaging, I often look up from a Grimes novel shocked that he is not sitting across from me so clear is his image in my mind's eye.

The Dickensian connection so many reviewers make is well founded. The children, dogs, caricatures, setting--- the melange of police procedural, comedy of manners and tea cosy a near-Victorianesque ( because I dwell on it so much ) frothy treat.

If she wasn't so damned smart, I might write her as my guilty pleasure. Happy thought that she can be candy and still a hybrid of Dickens, Sayers and Doyle all rolled into a comfy ball.


I feel proud that I discovered her, like I keep a sneaky delectable secret from the masses yet unitiated---still wandering to Elizabeth George for fulfilment.

Ha! Grimes did it first. And I am onto something oh deprived Non-Grimes readers!

I know something you don't know! And you are missing one helluva literary feast !


Shattered Eric Walters recently won UNESCO International Award for Literature in the service of tolerance. In this mindblowing YA book profoundly interrupted by the horror of the Rwandan genocide, I find myself an acute believer in Walters and his power of pen.
Ian works at a downtrodden soup kitchen inching hours toward a social science credit. There, he meets Jacques, a poignant former soldier who seems most of mundane humanity as butchered as any horror movie; atrocity forever embedded in his mind after his service in Rwanda.
In a series of harsh truths about society's easy dismissal and judgment of the homeless and the derelict, Walters spins a young man's viewpoint at a 360 angle, forcing the reader to come away as the protagonist has: a little saddened, a little wiser, a little better for the experience.
Coupled with an introduction by Romeo Dallaire, endorsing the text with a stamp of worthy validity, readers follow with a glimpse into the brilliant mind of a writer whose agenda deserves highest praise.


Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn.

My friend Cathy recommended this as a lowkey fantasy/romance. It's a very sweet thing with a pinch of faerie magic. Coriel spends her summers at court where the roguish red-headed king-to-be captures her heart and the horsemaster Roderick and ever-present Kentley, secure her sense of adventure and fun. Shinn departs from the convention in the guise of the aliora---beautiful, waif-like creatures hunted from their pixie world beyond the castle walls and subjected to slavery within. In a paradoxical twist, the castle itself undergoes an upheaval of demise.
This book put me in mind of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and the imaginative and forthright Fanny soon (as Coriel is ) disenchanted by her guardians doings and the mass failings of his eldest son. A girl caught in a wbe of dark deceit, while trying to uphold the sense of release she felt as a child with her cousin Edmund.

miscast.

Michelle Williams of Dawson's Creek (egad) is playing Charlotte Bronte.


Now, I am not saying she was horrid in Brokeback, but Charlotte Bronte is sacred territory.


She should tread carefully.


Have been watching Elizabeth I w/ Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons. Quite the screenplay, I assure you.

boats.

There are two things in the world I really love: a.) Aubrey and b.) Maturin. I love them so much that ever since I first stepped onto their quarterdeck and a.) shook Aubrey's hand and b.) threw my arms around Stephen, I have been trying my darndest to find another nautical series that will throw me for the loop they did.


And where have I been and in what strange, exotic waters? Think Frederick Marryatt ( whose name I never spell correctly ), C.S. Forester, Nathaniel Drinkwater, Dewey Lambdin, Alexander Kent and Julian Stockwin ( to name a few ).


And out of the dozens of nautical authors I have read since ( do not ask me to name all of them: I even read through Jonathan Lunn's Killigrew books---a hybrid of mystery and age-of-sail), I have never found my replica. How do you repeat perfection?

Well. Definitely not with Julian Stockwin. Yes, that sounds harsh. But, the irony is, he is the one author of the aforementioned I have followed from the beginning. Now, the seventh book, Command, has recently closed on my nighttable and I am left to ponder the question I always ponder ( atleast through the last seven Stockwins ) Why do I keep reading them? Why do I make sure I order them around publication date and eventually devote a sitting just to them? Someone could easily assert they are bad O'Brian cliches, that even the CHARACTERS are bad O'Brian cliches ( Renzi the philosopher who skulks moodily in a wavy purgatory to compensate for an ancient family sin), that the writing oozes out in such a forced manner that one is put in mind of Jennifer Connelly's sloppy speech in A Beautiful Mind: the film that made me realize people ACHE for Oscar's oft reflected in sentimentalized screenplay.


And the answer I found as I tripped through Kydd's bad dialogue ( I loathe the accented dialect Stockwin tries so hard to give him), the major lack of Renzi, his reappearance, his token " I love Cecilia what to do" scene and the choppy battle sequences was this:

Because I genuinely like Julian Stockwin. I have never met him. I know little about him... save that he served in the navy and donated a scrap of historical wood to a darling little bookshop in Halifax. Yet, I really do like him. I liked him from the moment I first read his author note (Aside: I love author notes. See CC Humphreys for guidance on these as a craft) which was steeped with humility and excitement. He and his wife are thrilled to be writing these books. He is living a dream. He obviously researches impeccably and has first-hand experience to boot.

Further, he started with a generally refreshing take on the world of nautical wonder. Thomas Kydd is pressed into service and learns the ropes and gleefully steps up in the nautical world and a myriad of adventures as he learns to love the sea in the way O'Brian taught the world to.

I see this parallel in Julian Stockwin. After the demise of the master, O'Brian, publishers must have been scrambling over each other to find the next star. Who wouldn't stumble upon Kydd and Renzi? Their friendship, indeed the whole Sharpe-ish climb from the bottom to the top of the mizzen mast seeps with potential.

Aye, but therein lies the problem. I finished book seven and am still flabberghasted by the potential.

This one proved more strongly than others that perhaps this infamous potential may someday be fully realized, but until Stockwin decides exactly what he wants to do and the stories do not seem like a work-out of a revised draft, I will have to close them again and again waiting for next year and admit, as always, that I really really like Julian Stockwin. I just wish I could say the same about his books.

lollipop.

Last night I went to see Miss Potter and believe me, it was well worth the wait.

I am currently up to my nose in a Potter project and will unravel more about her when I finish Linda Lear's scrumptious new biography: Beatrix Potter, a Life in Nature.

Until then, and before I head off to sell books at a J.L. Granatstein (the king of Canadian History ) event, let me leave you with some reviews of Dust; the new Martha Grimes novel.


She is one of the few authors I consistently buy in hardcover. For a soon-to-be peek at the new Grimesean wonder ( hits shelves Tuesday), read this!


The only thing I like better than a new Grimes novel, is a bag full of lollipops. Actually, having them both together is sheer bliss.

quick.

Busy reading and reviewing so here is a list of some YA novels of note I have consumed recently.

The Dashwood Sisters' Secrets of Love by Rosemary Rushton: Sense and Sensibility for teens!

Enthusiasm by Polly Shulman. Pride and Prejudice for teens. Winsome and witty. Smarter than the Rushton.

A Pickpocket's Tale by Karen Schwabach. Little Londoner is sent on a slave ship from Newgate to New York. Lives with a Jewish family while there. Schwabach paints a dazzling canvas of yesteryear while silmultaneously brushing readers up on Jewish traditions. What did a nineteenth century synagogue look like? Equal amounts of yiddish and flash cant pepper the language.


Snowfall KM Peyton. Stifled Charlotte leaves the promise of a dismal marriage and her aged cleric grandfather to hike in the alps with her brother and his Oxford friends. Love in many forms and adventures nearly unfathomable to most Victorian ladies abounds.


Ida B. by Katherine Hannigan. Ida is an irrepressible homeschooled child who spends her days communicating with the trees in her orchard and maximizing the potential of fun ( one of her many plans ). An engaging narrator, Ida B. relays the tale of her mother's sudden illness and her reinstatement into the public school system, not to mention her further relations with the most inspiring grade four teacher in recent literature ( a reason she is labelled Ms. Washington; she is a cornerstone of morality and nobility and inspiration ). Cancer is not sugarcoated here, nor Ida B's many conflicting emotions. Hannigan has given you a shovel to dig into the furthest recesses and cavernous curves of a young mind, and you will be more than happy to explore.


The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie Jaclyn Moriarty: the upper grade librarian's heaven sent for reluctant readers. Funny funny stuff.... and smart.

The Year of Secret Assignments. Also Moriarty. Read this now.


500 Great Books for Teens by Anita Silvey. Brilliant reference that expands on the gap that bridges Young Adults from Adult books. A must for anybody who is interested in this demogrraphic. Silvey was once chief editor at the Horn Book.

because Norman Warne makes me heart sing....

a teeny bit excited about this


Ewan MacGregor looks like Norman---so that is a good thing.


And I am all for authors falling for their publishers. It just adds a little spark to the romance.

Familiar.

Ever see something and shout :" Hey! I know this guy!?"

This author was my first floor manager at my fantastic yellow bookstore job. He was awesome and smart and articulate and driven and no one deserves the success of publication more.

Pre-order this. From my memory, this author is obsessed with achingly beautiful prose and magical realism. Let us hope, then, that his life is a stip of velcro that has somehow accumulated the absolute sparkle of everything he loves and dedicates his time to..........


ECW writes:

Collecting linguistic oddities, scraps of images, bits of text, and hybridized references, Rick Crilly cuts-up and collages, disassembles and recreates an anatomical mystery where a blank page becomes a meditation on grief, and a crossed out word is a librarian’s scalpel. The Tablecloth Trick whips away the artifice between Fiction and fact (that''s Fiction with a capital F — because Plato loved capital letters, after all) to see what, if anything, is left standing.


Ha! Brilliance. I'm going to stock my indy bookstore with it.

speculation.

The ever smart and book savvy Victoria at Eve's Alexandria is reading Master and Commander. Funny, when I sell the Aubrey-Maturin series ( which I do. A lot. It is my passion ....well, one of them). I usually tell the prospective reader to read Post Captain (2) or HMS Surprise (3-----and my favourite of the canon ) as there is more action and plot drive and one is less likely to feel swatted over the head with incongruous waves of nautical terminology.

Somehow, I think our blogger friend ( and I am surmising based on my sheer passion for O'Brian alone ) will read book the first, be engaged by the almost Austen-like circumstance and the witty rapport of even the inaugural ( and very different ) scene and be off; loving Maturin for the next 20 books, loathing Diana, and enjoying a canvas painted with sea, scope, flora, fauna, and cello music.

Newbie.

The best Christmas present, nay, the best present of anytime of year is the discovery of a new mystery series. It is , literally and figuratively, the gift that keeps on giving the year over.


Most of you know that I have recently acquired a job writing Children's and YA reviews. As such, I have been spending my time reading and researching for my soon-to-be-published young adult reviews. It seems quite some time ( maybe even two weeks ! egad !) since I picked up a "big people book" and read it straight through. I was delighted ( thus ) to have acquired a copy of Will Thomas' splendid debut novel Some Danger Involved while book shopping out of town yesterday afternoon.

There is only one thing better than reading a superb book written for my own age cover to cover....like an oasis after a desert ( a FUN desert, nonetheless filled with camels and trees and stuff ) of kiddy lit...........it is finding a book written for my own age that has VICTORIAN DETECTIVES !!


It has been an age since I have discovered a mystery series I would gladly follow to the ends of the earth. I have been reading the most recent contributions to many a worthy canon but a NEWBIE?!! I honestly cannot remember the last detective I fell so quickly for. Most of the time when I waddle in mysteriophile land, I am wading in the waters of trueblue friends I have known for years. A new friend? Brilliant.

Many reviewers are commenting on Thomas' throw back to the Doyle canon; an easy parallel, I assure you, since his mysteries are set in the gastlit realm of Victorian England. Yet, the Sherlock and Watson motif does not quite resonate here. I am set immediately in mind of ( eep!) Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Thomas Llewellyn, a petite Welshman, is on the verge of suicide when he discovers an ad in the paper which leads him to a prospective employer ( the brilliant, bright and enigmatic Cyrus Barker ) and an office filled with Oriental goodies and books top-to-floor. Beating out dozens of hopefuls for the position of inquiry agent, Llewellyn is fashioned for his new position; clothes, food and (best of all ) room and board. In a house that is the Victorian equivalent of Wolfe's brownstone populated by an eccentric French cook, and oriental garden, a cute dog and a Jewish Butler named Mac, Llewellyn finds a true home unique to his former circumstance.


Nero Wolfe indeed---- yet the warm and puzzling Cyrus Barker is not the sedentary Wolfe, yet a trained roundabout man who prowls the streets and alleys of London knowing everything and everyone ( he refers to the bustling realm as his "web"; he is eyes and ears to everything ). Though his knowledge of Oriental fighting techniques recalls Sherlock Holmes' boxing manouevers and aplomb for stick fighting, Barker ends the similarities there. He is much kinder to his assistant than Holmes and much more likeable and self-effacing.


The first story in the series I am rushing out to buy as soon as this post is over, takes us into the East End of London, to the Jewish quarter, to a place that immediately puts one in mind of Eliot's Daniel Deronda. It is atmospheric, funny and narrated by a smart and scintillating story-teller who has ( as Thomas proclaims ) a George Gissing-like past.

Well done. I am intrigued, engaged, excited and everything else in the world !


Would talk more but am off to acquire more of the recent Will Thomas canon!


oh. And Will Thomas has a blog.

Advent Tour Post

Hello everyone and welcome to the fabulous festivus world of Christmas Melrose!! Here you shall join in some of my Festive Favs and learn just what it means to be a gal so obsessed with Christmas and all things related, you top up your egg nog with more than a healthy dose of nostalgia, and break out the jingling carols the day after Remembrance Day ( November 11 here in Canuckville).

I thought I would take you through some of my ritualistic Christmas events. I am a very merry traditionalist who happens to be ( delightfully ) a Victorianist as well; that era full of Christmas traditionalist-making. So, bring out the figgy pudding and pull up a chair decked with bells and holly and what-not.


BOOKS:

Christmas without books is actually not Christmas; just some snow-filled phantom globe of a day where the supermarkets are not open. Christmas with books is worth waiting 364 days a year for. Me, traditionalist, Victorianist jingle-jangler, reads the same books every year around this holy, holly time.


Great Expectations the first of the Melrose Christmas picks. I first read this book on a snowy November night at the beginning of high school. The ambience was perfect for the windy chill. After all, the Dickens classic begins at Christmas. Indeed, Pip talks about hearing the carols sing ( feigning innocence to Mrs. Joe about his goings-on with Magwitch the criminal on the moors ), stirring figgy pudding and having a myriad of relatives ( including the unstoppable Uncle Pumblechook ) for a Christmas feast. Most humans are head over heels for Scrooge, I love GE. One of my favourite Christmases included a pack of Victorian classics from my parents---GE was one of them....after I had finished opening gifts and munching turkey, I rushed up to my room to read it once more.



Vienna Prelude by Bodie Thoene

As a minister's daughter, I spent a lot of time at church growing up. Before and after the morning service I would often prowl ( and later work ) in our church library. I pride myself in introducing churchgoers to a range of classics; such as Christy and Les Miserables. Though not a classic, I have re-visited Vienna Prelude every year since my first perusal from said church library. In essence, I have read Vienna Prelude fifteen times; always at Christmas. Much of the book is set in Austria during the Christmas season in the years leading up to WW II. Partly in the Tyrolean alps in a cozy farmhouse filled with warmth and tradition, at a small-spired church which puts me immediately in mind of the church I imagine was Franz Gruber's muse for Silent Night, and in the lofts and hay of a barn I see so clearly and smell so potently. There are sleighbells and horses and a clear, starry sky that spans for miles. Partly in a bustling Berlin department store filled with shoppers. And, as the titular city, Vienna stands in for Christmas; with street merchants selling carved creches, with fires burning in metal drums along the many winding streets, with a brasher report ducking out of the Sacher hotel and holding a fistful of tickets for Christmas concerts played by the Philharmonic.
Full of classical music and anecdotes of Dvorak, not to mention a swell love story, this is Christmas atmosphere at its best. Vienna became my dream city the moment after I read it.


Rose in Bloom and Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott

This tradition started in first year university. They quickly became my "home books", books I left at my parent's house when I returned to Toronto after visits. They are thoroughly Christmas for me. Anecdotal and almost ridiculous in simplicity, they are as comfortable as cider. Rose Campbell is sent to live with her Uncle Alec after her father passes away. It doesn't take long for the orphaned child to find complete happiness with her rowdy male cousins and her strong, Scots uncle who makes her eat "parrich" ( that's Alcottean for porridge) and let out her tight corsets. Early feminism disguised in anecdotal bliss.



MUSIC:

Music is my favourite part of the Christmas season. Nothing tugs me back to a particular time in my childhood than hearing my favourite carols. As an advocate for the reinstatement of hymnal traditions in church, and as a lover Church Music history, I relish the poetic words, strands and cadences of beautiful old Christmas hymns. From the Gregorian through the Baroque, through Handel to Bach's Arioso and to the Christmas hymns that permeate the 17th-20th Centuries with their haunting chords and t0-die-for lyrics, I am a Carol junkie. No secular Rudolph for me, Christmas songs must have religious meaning for it is those songs alone which leak an almost ethereal beauty.


I remember clearly listening to Elvis and the Carpenters' Christmas songs growing up; not to mention the old Bonanza tv show LP my dad has ( Christmas at the Ponderosa or some such ) which isn't so bad when Adam Cartwright sings an old negro spiritual.


Michael W. Smith's Christmas album remains ( I think ) his most credible endeavour. Partly because he uses Gregorian strain and influences, intersperses latin with the prophet Isaiah and enlists the Vienna Boys Choir to sing with dazzling orchestration. I usually don't pay attention this artist, but his Christmas cd is a work of art.



MOVIES:

BING CROSBY

The Sound of Music

The Muppet Christmas Carol

It's a Wonderful Life

the Sound of Music


RANDOM HIGGLETY FESTIVE PIGGLETY


Christmas at the World's Biggest Bookstore : stand at the front of the store, wear reindeer antlers or a santa hat, wear red or green ( thanks Christine ) and throw Hershey's kisses at people while making a penguin puppet form festive greetings. Too many late nights, too many free order-in lunches, thousands upon zillions of books sold.


Christmas at home: I take an annual walk ( I love walking ) mid afternoon just as it is getting dark so I can see the lights and wander in the snow. Sadly, there is no snow here yet which makes me think I might see my first green Christmas ever ( don't make me scream!! )

Christmas Eve service: a must, followed by a feast---my mom is a spectacular cook; we have spinach dip in sourdough bread, jalapeno poppers, brie, etc., etc.


The Answering of the Phone: ever since Elf was released, my sister Fruity and I started a tradition. From the 23rd through New Years' we answer the phone " Buddy the Elf, what's your favourite colour?" Fun people respond with their favourite colour and laugh, stupid people hang up thinking they reached some demented business.


Advent calendars: my mom still gets us each one every year. She sends them to us at university.

Narnia: a recent development but ever so Christmas what with Aslan and Father Christmas

The Bible: my dad reads a chapter ( usually Luke 2) before we open our presents. But there is always the Matthew/ Luke debate and yelps of "read the one with the wisemen."


Lots of presents, lots of reading, lots of laughs.

Hope you enjoyed reading about Christmas in the land of Moi!


Merry Christmas to all of you-----every single one. Have a bookish holiday and squeal a couple of your favourite titles at me if you want recommendations. I have sold hundreds upon hundreds of books this season. Here's hoping for many more.

nighttable

The Murder of Bindy MacKenzie - Jaclyn Moriarty

Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World -Nicholas Basbanes

Causeway- Linden MacIntyre

The Gutenburg Elegies:The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age--Sven Birkerts

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation--M.T. Anderson

The Lighthouse--PD James

The View From Castle Rock- Alice Munro



Now I cannot wait until Christmas Holidays when I can finish all of them.

Off to see Eragon today.

adaptation.

The only thing better than a startlingly good read, is a dazzling literary adaptation.

In most cases, gleaning their films from ITV and the BBC, Masterpiece Theatre does a tremendous job.

The last few weeks have been repeats (Carrie's War, Under the Greenwood Tree), but January dawns a new era of masterpiece!


First up The Virgin Queen: any one who has read even a snippet of Philippa Gregory will be on this one!

Jane Eyre: the fantastic adaptation ( I would love to hear opinions ) Court burned for me earlier this Fall.

The Sally Lockhart Mysteries: Long before I knew of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, this little Victorianist was rampantly reading the ins and outs of Lockhart's mysterious London. I am very excited they have been filmed. Long Live Phillip Pullman.

Christmas is the time to drag out favourite past miniseries:

Pride and Prejudice
Foyle's War
Our Mutual Friend ( an absolute favourite of mine )
Anne of Green Gables
Horatio Hornblower
North and South

I own tons of them. What are your festive favourites?

And other miraculous cures

Okay, here it is folks, the Christmas Book!

You know, the Book that all publishers run out of during the crunch time of the holidays? The book they loosely grapple with their fingers, sending sporadic stock now and then goodnaturedly so you pounce on each box with aplomb?

The Book that is a friggin' scarcity the ten shopping days before Christmas but becomes a stocking nightmare on the 27th of December when you have no other books on your bare shelves ( as bare as the cupboards of the unsuspecting Whos prey to the Grinches Christmas eve massacre ) but fifty thousand copies of the selfsame, now viciously obsolete, Book.


Yep kids, last year it switched from Marley and Me to You: The Owner's Manual to Case Histories by Kate Atkinson ( trust the World's Biggest Bookstore to pull that one off ). This year it's Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Dr. Vincent Lam, the Atwood propaganda worthy of the Giller prize ( did I mention Lam is represented by Anchor Canada whereas every other nominee on this year's "where the hell did that come from?!" list was published by small Torontonian avant-garde presses that no one has ever heard of ) and our utmost attention. We've sold out four times. And, pending a huge shipment next Tuesday, we'll have to spend the weekend in the throes of improvization: you know the same propensity that allows you to sell Jack Absolute to Da Vinci-coders:

"He solves codes. Really he does. And I think if you look really, really carefully you'll see the Illuminati in the background. A little lacking on the italics, mind you, but they are indeed, the darkest con of man!"

Globe.

She's no Deirdre Baker......but I don't mind reading what Susan Perren has to say in the Kids' section of the Globe and Mail now and then. (Odd, that the only thing I like about the Star is the bi-weekly Small Print section in which Deirdre Baker rambles, in her almost unbelievably articulate way, about the brightest and best of the Kids' book world).
But this, dear friends, is not about the Star, it is about Susan Perren's 2006 YA picks.

They read as follows:


The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation by MT Anderson ( recent winner of the National Book Award)

Gatty's Tale by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Odd Man Out by Sarah Ellis

Rex Zero and the End of the World by Tim Wynne-Jones

A Very Fine Line by Julie Johnston



A couple are usual suspects by now, but the Sarah Ellis delighted me. I was glad to hear her get the credit she so obviously deserves for this most recent endeavour.

As a bookseller, Octavian Nothing has been a challenge. It is, like the Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, a book that forces the younger demographic to challenge themselves beyond the usual expectancy. Only the most dedicated of readers will have the tenacity to battle Anderson's beautiful 18th Century prose, dilluted sentences and spacious intervals. To get inside of Octavian's mind and reap the benefits of this multi-faceted text, one must be willing to surrender completely to one of the most difficult teen reads of the past couple of years. A worthwhile adventure, indeed, but not for the half-heartedly inclined.


I read the ARC of the Julie Johnston in the summer and was thrilled at the supposed simplicity of the text and how the interposed thematic meaning beneath surfaced in Johnston's always eloquent manner. I love giving it to bright pre-teeners; wide eyed dreamers who love dwelling on the cusp of reality and fantasy; who feed on stories that transport them to different times. For those anxious to find a parallel, Eva Ibbotson's A Song For Summer strikes me as similar in tone and theme. Though both are set in different worlds physically, they both require the same capacity for abandonment. You want to drift of in these books. Take the words on the page, chew it slowly, and drift far away.


Gatty's Tale is, of course, a Crossley-Holland ( worthy in itself) and takes up the plight of the fiesty orphan we previously encountered in the enormously popular Arthur series. Always thinking our young friend deserves a book of her own, this met my expectations! Gatty's adventures seem to me a hybrid of Adam of the Road and an equally fascinating group of books by Joan Aiken ( see Wolves of Willougby Chase and Black Hearts in Battersea).

canuck.

Canada Reads 2007!


The nation wide discussion/ contest that brought us Deafening, and Rockbound , and the Hubert Aquin book that no one understood.
Hats off to you, CBC!

Here's next year.... with some of everyone's perennial favourite judges ( face it ! I just have a thing for a contest where Jim Cuddy lets as all know he reads Guy Vanderhaegue and Steven Page...well. Steven Page should always have a venue for voicing his book opinions!

Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor
(defended by Jim Cuddy )


Children of My Heart by Gabrielle Roy
(defended by Denise Bombardier )


The Song of Kahunsha by Anosh Irani
(defended by Donna Morrissey)


Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill
(defended by John K. Samson)

Natasha and Other Stories by David Bezmozgis
(defended by Steven Page)


There it is, kids, get reading. I have to read Lullabies and Song of Kahunsha; but since a lot of the selections have been around for a bit I, luckily in the case of the Roy and the Timothy Taylor, have already partaken.

whitbread.

A Whitbread by any other name is still a Whitbread.

In adult territory, I was not at all surprised to see perennial favourites Mark Haddon and David Mitchell show up.

I was, of course, delighted that The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox graced the scene. Although it needs some editing, it is fresh and captivating and spookily unique.

Here are the YA nominees ( a splendid list indeed ):


Clay by David Almond
The Diamond of Drury Lane by Julia Golding
Set in Stone by Linda Newbery
Just in Case by Meg Rosoff


I read the David Almond in ARC form in the summer. Very creepy with a tinge of sci-fi.

Julia Golding remains a new favourite Diamond of Drury Lane and Cat Among the Pigeons are not only spirited to life by Cat's colourful narration but are peopled by the most intriguing characters of the 18th Century's theatrical world. Case in point, Cat's guardian is Richard Brinsley Sheridan ( you know, the one with all of the insults: " you mewling, mangy, puppy!" but, he keeps them in check here).


I have not read Set in Stone but am off to order it because it looks fascinating ...and historical....coupled with an art teacher and a governess!


Just in Case by Rosoff is one of everyone's most talked of this year. It keeps popping up on the Cybil's nomination list and Kat gave it a glowing review bestowing upon it five balls of yarn ( impressive indeed ), laying aside her obvious bias for the character's first name (we all know a good Justin ), and gushing:

"What a brilliant book! Explosive imagery, whimscal and serious, smart and incredibly heart wrenching, I couldn't put this book down. It was disturbing, but poignant. It had the "coming of age" feel to it, in a very unconventional way. I think I fell in love a little with Justin (David) and Boy. I found it totally believable, even though it's totally unbelievable. I must read her first book. You must too. Possibly now one of my favoutire YA novels to date. "


Enough said.

candy.

My former bookseller friend Amy and myself once came up for a term for the books you read during exams when your brain cannot take the flickering lights of the 13th floor of Robarts any longer; the books that latch onto your brain and keep you steadfastly reading into the wee hours of the morning during your Christmas break...and then keep you well-fed throughout the next day starting at whatever time you roll headachily out of bed. The same books that sustain you through flights and bus trips to Reading Week destinations or to the cottage on the long weekend; the books you tuck under your arm as you scale down the boardwalk to the harbour on a balmy Spring night.


These books need not have any literary qualities, need not be disected or chewed on or discussed. They need only the following elements:

---a setting so fantastically unlike your own you blink twice to form it in your mind's eye (bonus if historical and set on a ship).

----characters so deliciously like and yet so unlike yourself you wish upon wish for more than a resemblance as you scan their happy and fairytale-esque lives with envious glee

---a frosting of romance or adventure so sweet and understated you go back pages upon pages to get it exactly right mouthing: " did this just happen? Let me see that again!"



The one jolly thing about my hiatus from school is my ability to read whatever the heck I want. As I tend to read about 5-7 books a week, I try, as is my duty as a bookseller, to read from a wide range of genres. I will usually read one book of literary or classical fiction ( or revisit old favourites ), one work of biography, history or literary criticism, one Young Adult novel and one genre novel ( usually mystery ). The other books I read are completely wild card!


In the past couple of weeks I have over-indulged in a lot of candy. Namely, fantasy-romances. Anyone who knows me knows that this is about as unlikely for me as a bout of sudden passion for the works of Dan Brown. Fantasy romance?!?!?! I can see many a jaw dropping. Yes, Virginia, there really is a pile of Luna books on my dresser. Once I got past that surge of guilt one immediately has upon cracking the spine of a candy novel, I fell deeply into the spell woven by Holly Lisle, Caitlin Brennan ( a nom de plume for Judith Tarr ) and Maria Snyder.

My candy reads for my recent long weekend in London ( the Ontario kind ) and my lunch breaks at work have been tantalizingly fluffy and delicious.


Looking for candy this holiday season? Candy so sweet and filling it tastes like the 18 mini mars bars you sneak from the jar on Hallowe'en night while waiting for kids to ring your doorbell?


Lose yourself completely! Hop from whatever work of "legitimate" literature you have pawned yourself into appreciating and dive into:

Talyn by Holly Lisle, Poison Study and its sequel Magic Study by Maria Snyder and the works of Sharon Shinn.


Some argue that all reading is candy.... it tastes good, is addictive and can be bad for you ( staying up well past normal hours for one more chapter ), I argue differently. Literature is tasty--- like a filling meal that tempts your palate with a range of complicated sensations. Often rich and dizzying, sometimes sour or stale.....often leaving you more than full. Candy, on the other hand, offers temporary hyper-satisfaction; a sugar rush that dissolves and leaves you craving sterner stuff. Reach into the jar now and then and pull out something colourful and chocolatey and sweet, but remember boys and girls, never let it completely spoil your appetite!

Reading Thomas Hardy backwards.....

Jasper Fforde once claimed to read Thomas Hardy backwards; the endings of a Hardy novel being what they are ( Jude, Tess, Return of the Native, Casterbridge..... ) how could one not try any plausable means to change the dismal outcome?


Currently reading the advanced copy of Claire Tomalin's excellent Thomas Hardy : The Time Torn Man (see also her Life of Jane Austen ) I have been engaged in a re-evaluation of one of my favourite Victorianists. Like Woolf and LM Montgomery, Hardy straddles the Victorian period he loved and romanticized and the modern period inevitably closing upon him. Hardy's magnificently melancholy poem The Darkling Thrush, written on the cusp of the millenium, seems to lyrically battle Hardy's ascerbic frustration with the dawning of a new age. In fiction, Hardy revisits his fear of change on numerous occasions in numerous different guises. Perhaps the lightest book to express his disenchantment is Under the Greenwood Tree. The choir at a small parish is threatened to be replaced by a new harmonium commissioned by the forward-thinking Parson Maybold. Underneath Fancy Day and Dick Dewey's enchanting and lighthearted story of wooing and romance ( wooing and romance in Hardy ....who'da thunk?! ) , is Hardy's age-old battle with resistance and change.


Whether or not you read Hardy backwards ( Wessex Tales, Greenwood Tree and the lesser-known A Loaodecian suggest that is not always a necessity ), the thematic elements stringing Hardy's novels rarely stray from their intrinsic core: the pending certainty of change.


I am fascinated by authors who write their personal problems again and again into their fiction; hoping that with each instance they seep themselves into their words they will be automatically healed or, in Hardy's case, absolved from the pressures of transition.


So, Hardy gets depressing ( I can think of little worse than the scene solidifying the demise of Jude and Sue's children in Jude the Obscure or Tess and Angel's parting steeped in a bile-tasting double-standard ) I cannot wholly blame him. His cocoon was slowly evolving around him, enmeshing him in uncertaintly and doubt. For all of the Tess in the Western Canon, there are the Greenwood Trees. Hardy straddled dark and light as much as he struggled with the present and the future. Yes he paints a golden age and blemishes it with strife. Was the oncoming 20th Century not that very thought incarnate?


Jasper Fforde can keep reading him backwards: Knowing Hardy's absolute obsession with the things that have been and his terror of that before him, he would probably heartily approve.

The Side-Kick syndrome

I finished Sharpe's Fury last weekend. I love these books. They are like Hallowe'en candy; they can get sickeningly sweet somewhere in the middle what with the same scenarios, green rifle-coat one-liners, and Sharpe's attraction to women who string through the novels like Bond girls, but they are addictive.

And, as always, my opinion of Cornwell's long serial was heightened by my fervent enjoyment of Patrick Harper.

I love Patrick Harper. In the television series as well as in the books. Harper always commences a stream-of-consciousness loop that leads back to my high school English ISU: Side-kicks in Literature and how they are often stronger than the lead character themselves. Watson is more than a "whetstone for Holmes' mind", he is the moral centre of the book, the counterbalance between the willing reader and Holmes' egotism.

Along with Watson and Holmes I delved into Robinson Crusoe and his good man Friday ( however politically incorrect his portrayal seems nowadays with its "savage" overtones ) and Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

My love for the "side-kicks" never fails me. I wonder if the "everyman" in me ( the every "person" for those who hate the gendering of terms ) leads me to relate more to those slightly out of the spotlight.

Consider Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations: often Pip's compass and moral advisor; Consider Gabriel Utterson in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Often times the sidekick is made of sterner stuff than the man or woman given the leading role. Or, for a different splash of flavour, Harriet in Jane Austen's Emma: certainly not the centre of attention but the reason that our titular heroine is able to play out many of her schemes. The sidekick becomes project, thus. The sidekick becomes essential to the unravelling of the plot.

Modern literature, as well as 18th and 19th C literature aforementioned, is peppered with sidekicks worthy of our acclaim. The major root of my love for the mystery genre lies in its serialized format. Should a devout reader fall hard for a sidekick---legman Archie Goodwin in the Nero Wolfe books, Meyer in John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series, Barbara Havers in Elizabeth George's Lynley books and Melrose Plant the sidekick who supersedes the traditional role of sidekick and turns it on its ear----they have publication after publication to watch them grow and evolve.

The historical adventure novel lends itself well as a landscape where happy sidekicks can exist. Think the interesting role of Maturin the secret agent/nautical surgeon in the brillian Patrick O'Brian series, Ate in the Jack Absolute series by Humphreys, and Renzi in Julian Stockwin's interesting "Kydd" books.

Ron in Harry Potter, Brom in Eragon, Miles Dorrington in the Pink Carnation books by Lauren Willig---the list goes on and on.


They are far more than foils. How many fandoms on the internet arise from sidekick love? Think the fabulous Doctor that plays roomate to the uptight House, Archie Kennedy ( or even Lieut. Bush ) in A and E's Hornblower, Milner in "Foyle's War."


In a Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes famously informs Watson that he is "lost without my Boswell."

After another bout into Sargeant Harper-land, the sentence starts ringing true for many a delightful character and drives my respect for a well-drawn second-player even more.