Back On Tuesday

I bought this at a deep discount thinking it was one of Toronto author, David Gilmour's, more recent books. In fact this is a newer edition of his first novel and was written in 1986. Gene is a guy whose breakup with his wife, J., is hitting him like a ton of bricks some months after the fact. So how does he deal with it? He assaults his landlord, kidnaps his daughter, flies to Jamaica, drinks a helluva lot of overproof rum and interacts with some very marginal characters over a period of eighteen hours - Under the Volcano condensed. It's the story of a good man who behaves like a bad boy. I found myself, from my 2008 vantage point, wanting to shake some sense into him but if I look back through the mists of time I was pretty wild in the 80s as well. His adventures are amusing but the idea of his little girl left alone in a sketchy hotel room kept niggling at me and prevented me from chuckling at his misbehaviour. I liked reading it but suspect that I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more if I'd read it when it was first published.

Mr. Bean visits the library.

BooksBooksBooks

Jack Kerouac interviewed by Fernanda...

Libraryland

This Is How

MJ Hyland, Man Booker shortlisted in 2006 for Carry Me Down, talks about the pressure of writing in the spotlight, her love of tragedy and the politics beneath the surface of her latest novel, This Is How, which appears on the Guardian's inaugural Not the Booker prize shortlist

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Elevators, Americans, Missed Connections

Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.

To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes.

And I say: That little ole lonely elevator girl looking up sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons, what’s her name & address?” - closing words of Jack Kerouac’s introduction to Robert Frank’s book of photographs, The Americans.

OPEN SPACE
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Digging To America

In Ann Tyler's 17th novel two families, each welcoming an adopted baby girl from Korea, are thrown together in an airport. The Donaldson delegation consists of Brad and Bitsy and their numerous relatives. They are a huge, over the top American clan who greet their new family member with exuberant razzmatazz. The Yazdan family is more reserved. Sami and Ziba Yazdan and Sami's Iranian born mother, Maryam, stand quietly off to the side awaiting their new baby. This book is about what happens when these two very different families become entwined. Bitsy, the organizer, decides that they will reunite for an "Arrival Party" for the girls each year on the anniversary of their arrival to the U.S.. There are also leaf raking parties, New Years parties and even a binky party (don't ask). Cultural differences pop up frequently and come to a head when Maryam and Bitsy's recently widowed father, Dave, become romantically involved. Tyler explores cultural identity, political correctness, longing, loss and what it feels like to be a perpetual outsider. I always look forward to a new Tyler novel and this one does not disappoint. It's written with the gentleness and humour that have become Tyler's hallmarks.

Unearthed again

Kit Williams sparked the nation's biggest treasure hunt 30 years ago with his book Masquerade, which sold 2m copies worldwide. But the public response was so overwhelming – Williams received more than 100 letters a day for two years – that the publicity-shy author and illustrator became a virtual recluse.More

Japanese Crepe Paper Fairy Tales

The Baika Women's University Collection of Crêpe Paper Books in Japan consists of more than one hundred and fifty works produced between about 1880 and 1940 in English, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese editions. Not all of the books are present in each language and some of the books were published on thick Japanese paper rather than crêpe paper. Most, but not all, of the books are traditional fairy tales.

Loads more at BibliOdyssey

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

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The only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf speaking

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30 Great Authors from Argentina

Three Percent: 30 Great Authors from Argentina
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Whoso List to Hunt

Poem of the week: Whoso List to Hunt by Thomas Wyatt

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

But as for me, alas, I may no more;

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

I am of them that furthest come behind.

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind

Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore

Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,

Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,

As well as I, may spend his time in vain.

And graven with diamonds in letters plain,

There is written her fair neck round about,

'Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.'

Huxley vs Orwell

See the rest of it at Amusing Ourselves to Death by Stuart McMillen
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Iranian Kid's Books

A Journey Round My Skull
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Passages from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1965-67)

U B U W E B

The Book Seer

Excuse me, I've just finished reading by . What should I read next? The Book Seer

I plugged in The Gathering by Anne Enright and got this:

I've read half of them already and liked them. Good then.

The Gathering

The Gathering, winner of the Man Booker in 2007, is the fourth novel by Irish author Anne Enright. Thirty-nine year old Veronica Hegarty is one of twelve children in an Irish family, nine of whom are still living. This story is told by her as she prepares for the funeral of her alcoholic brother Liam who has committed suicide in England. Her account, ranging across three generations of her family history, is unsparing. This is all about memory and its elusiveness.
Veronica holds great disdain for her mother who has had the psychological stuffing knocked out of her by 19 pregnancies that resulted in 12 live births and 7 miscarriages and is now, perhaps always was, a vague ghostly shell of a woman. She has more respect for her flashy, passionate maternal grandmother, Ada, with whom she and two of her siblings lived when their mother was overwhelmed by the rigours of her serial pregnancies. There is the distinct possibility that Ada may have enabled familial child sexual abuse. Veronica weaves a story of her own imagining around Ada's early life in an attempt to make sense of the sorry spot they have all arrived at.
In her grief she pushes her two daughters away; her loathing for her huband, Tom, is of longer standing. She and her surviving siblings comprise a potent and volatile stew as they gather to say goobye to Liam.
The novel is filled with a despair for which there is no consolation but the writing is dead-on and clever and after sucking it all up I find I want a second helping of Enright soon.

Don't Panic

Pan Macmillan is re-issuing Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series in September with a new set of covers, in celebration of 30 years since the original publication. The covers are designed by Crush. More at Creative Review

Random Wodehouse Quote

This site is great.

The lunches of fifty-seven years had caused his chest to slip down to the mezzanine floor.

The Heart of a Goof (1926) ``Chester Forgets Himself''

See moreRandom Wodehouse Quotes

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Pynchon trailer

Bookninja

Vintage Swedish book covers

A Journey Round My Skull: Cocktaildags - vintage Swedish book covers
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Long Story Short by Elyse Friedman

Elyse Friedman discusses her book of Toronto short stories. I read her novel Then Again ages ago. I think it's time to read more of her work.

Le Tour du monde en 80 jours

The Illustrated Jules Verne: Le Tour du monde en 80 jours
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