Year-End Tallies

Happy 2014! I hope the arrival of a new year marks health and happiness for all of us.

As I, and many of you, have done for the last few years, below I've compiled information about the books and music I consumed in the year that was.

Thirty Most Played Songs in 2013:

Mother Mother, "Bit by Bit"

Diddy with Dirty Money, "Hello Good Morning"

Dead or Alive, "Brand New Lover" (original single mix)

Deadmau5 featuring Gerard Way, "Professional Griefers"

Maroon 5, "Moves Like Jagger"

Nina Simone, "Take Care of Business" (Pilooski Remix)

Amanda Palmer, "Map of Tasmania" (featuring The Young Punx)

Azar Swan, "In My Mouth"

Muse, "Madness"

Deadmau5, "Raise Your Weapon"

Nightwish, "End of All Hope"

Firebeatz and Schella, "Dear New York"

Harlequin, "I Did It for Love"

ABBA, "Take A Chance On Me"

Honeymoon Suite, "Feel It Again"

Kate Bush, "Be Kind To My Mistakes"

Christina Aguilera featuring Redman, "Dirrty"

Jimmy Rankin, "We'll Carry On (Prelude)"

ABBA, "Summer Night City"

Dieselboy and Bare, "Beyond Thunderdome"

Exile, "Kiss You All Over"

Jenson Interceptor, "Tiny Thing"

Kim Wilde, "You Keep Me Hangin' On"

Lady Gaga, "Judas"

Linda Ronstadt, "How Do I Make You"

Seals and Croft, "Get Closer"

Siouxsie and The Banshees, "This Wheel's On Fire"

Tears for Fears, "Mad World"

Emmelie de Forest, "Only Teardrops"

Prince, "I Wonder U"

I listed thirty songs rather than twenty-five because several of the songs at the bottom of the list were tied. Once again, this year's list reflects a great deal of comfort listening (ABBA, Harlequin, Jenson Interceptor, Seals and Croft, etc.), but happily there are also some new discoveries. While my listening is perhaps less ambitious than it was when I was in my teens and twenties, I do try to maintain some currency with popular music — recognizing that the Web and digital music sites make doing so much more difficult than it used to be. There is simply SO MUCH music in the world to hear!

According to iTunes' somewhat imperfect counting system, as of today I have exactly 11,900 songs in my library. Since last January, I listened to about seventy percent of those songs at least once. Having iTunes on my laptop has really changed the way I listen to music. I now have to make a point of listening to an album as an album, rather than as a collection of random songs. I create Genius playlists almost daily, reflecting the mood I'm in or the music I want to work to, and I tend to listen to personally crafted playlists on my way to and from work. Statistically, this style of listening means that I have a handful of songs I've listened to at least twenty times, a substantial number of songs I've played five to fifteen times, and a large number of songs I've played once or twice. Still, it is always a joy to hear something I've ignored for months when it turns up in random play.

New features on the version of iTunes I've just upgraded to may affect my listening again this year. Since I've just reset my play counts to zero again, I guess we'll see in another 365 days.

Books Read in 2013: 165

Rather than list all 165 books (as other bloggers have done), I'll tell you a little about what I observe about my reading behaviour.

First I must acknowledge that I'm disappointed I didn't reach 200 books this year, as that number remains my annual goal. But given the year I've had, I'm happy to have cracked 150 books, particularly as I was sitting at 147 on November 30.

I have some rules about what I record as "read." I write down children's novels and YA novels, but I don't write down picture books and books with limited text. I also don't write down graphica (graphic novels, graphic memoirs, etc.). So, for instance, although I read Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger, it is not part of my title count, nor are Feminist Ryan Gosling: Feminist Theory (as Imagined) from Your Favorite Sensitive Movie Dude by Danielle Henderson (a humour book that compiles entries from a now famous blog and the infamous Hey, Girl meme) and I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats by Francesco Marciuliano (a humorous collection of short poems in various forms).

I have struggled this year with how to write down books I've edited — or whether to do so. I've opted not to include several books I edited that had limited textual context, but did include the two novels I edited (mostly because I read both novels in full at least four times each during the various phases of editing). I think I could have included at least other two books I edited, but I couldn't decide on a date for recording them as "read" (for the novels, I used the publication date: not as obvious for my contract editing work).

I notice that reading brings out my compulsive completist. I've read almost the entire Dear Canada series this year after receiving one book in the series to review (incidentally, I gave the book an "E," or five-star, review). I read several children's and YA novels on the basis of finding them on an NPR list of "best" books for young readers, and will continue to pick away at this list over the next few months. I've been thinking about Laura Ingalls Wilder professionally and academically, and that has led to my reading divergently around the Little House canon, including books by Roger Lea MacBride (Rose Wilder Lane's adopted heir), memoirs by Alison Arngrim and Melissa Gilbert, and various books about LIW herself.

In a similar impulse, I tend to read back through the catalogues of writers whose books I've enjoyed — even when those experiences are of varying quality. This year's new Jaclyn Moriarty was a little uneven — not my favourite of her novels — while Louise Rennison's new entry in the Tallulah Casey series was happily better than the last one. I read another title in the Size 12 (mystery) series by Meg Cabot, and a couple more in Carole Nelson Douglas's Irene Adler series, but have no interest in reading any other series by either of these authors. But I've read everything that Gail Bowen has published, including the short Charlie D mysteries she's written for Orca's Rapid Reads series; this year, Bowen contributed two new titles to my count, and I look forward to new books from her in 2014.

A little closer to home, I was disappointed by several books by authors from my local publishing community — authors whose work I've previously enjoyed (but not authors I've worked with). Also, I did enjoy several of the NWP books I read this year but must confess that I haven't re-read many of the published books I read in manuscript: too much else to read!

I find that I'm highly responsive to the recommendations on LibraryThing, particularly for YA and children's books. I also continue to be an avid reader of reviews in various magazines and newspapers, and I buy and eventually read many books on the basis of reviews and ads. Of course, I know that doing so makes me somewhat unusual psychographically, and I'm still very interested (academically and personally) in questions of book discoverability.

Reviewing continues to add to my list — a couple of dozen title this year — and I've already received a stack of books for reviewing in January. I'd definitely like to extend my opportunities as a reviewer this year.

I am surprised that I didn't read several of the books I was initially enthusiastic to buy or receive. These include a couple of memoirs with immediate ties to my academic work and a few serious books about language and culture. I'll hope to get to these soon. Of course, like any book lover, I own far, far more books than I'm likely ever to read unless I stop buying new books and stop borrowing books from the library. Hahahahaha: that's NOT going to happen.

According to LibraryThing, my total library to date includes 3632 books. Of these, 957 are books I own but have not read completely, and 1237 are books I have read but do not own. This library is historical, capturing books I read as a child (at least those I can remember) as well as books I've read or bought as an adult reader. LibraryThing remains my favourite social-media site (although I'm not very social on it) and is one of two or three sites I visit almost every day.

So that's 2013 for me, in terms of books and music. If you have any must-read or must-hear suggestions, please leave a comment below or let me know in person.

Happy New Year!

A Spanner in My Works!

 

The other day I described myself as a text-processing machine. Well, the sentence below is as much justification as I will ever need for my purpose in the world.

Moving from theory to practice, there has been progression in methods of practical delivery of the medical humanities in the undergraduate curriculum over the years.

I will edit this to make it slightly more graceful (and the problems more obvious), thus:

In the movement from theory to practice, there has been progress in the methods of practical delivery of the medical humanities in the undergraduate curriculum over the years.

Slightly more graceful, I emphasize. But seriously: in that sentence, the main clause is inverted, has a null subject, and is modified by an almost endless string of preposition phrases:

1. in the movement

2. from theory

3. to practice

4. in the methods

5. of practical delivery

6. of the medical humanities

7. in the undergraduate curriculum

8. over the years

!!!

I'll keep refining this sentence. And yes, it's not like I'm digging ditches for a living, I realize. But sentences like the original will keep editors in business for a long, long time.

L

Half-Year: Check-in, Review

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Well, howdy. Happy Sunday. Joyous Canada Day Eve. How's every little thing with you?

Here it is June 30, the year half over and summer just beginning. It seems to me like an apt time to take stock of 2013.

So far, not such a great year, really. There have been a few milestones, though:

• power boating course: certification in competent crew, day skipper, coastal navigation

• radio operator's certification

• assistant professor title

For the last seven or eight weeks, my every spare moment has involved editing. I've edited, copy edited, and/or proofread a ridiculous number of pages in the last two months, including an online exhibit on western Canadian culinary history, a book on special-service canine training, two novels, an exhibition catalogue on Chinese maps and other cultural documents, and a book on the creative arts as complementary training in health and medical studies. I am a text-processing machine!

At the same time, I foolishly agreed to do some volunteer work for the editors' association, both locally and nationally. What was I thinking?!? Was I thinking?

And I continue to review books, including four new titles for fall. I have nearly thirty published reviews to date.

And I am still in pursuit of my two-hundred-book goal for 2013, although right now I'm far shy of the hundred-book mark, with only seventy-one books read as of today.

(There is, I admit, some tangle in the logic of this process. When I receive the published copies of the books I've edited, I enter them in LibraryThing as read books, but I don't record them in my daybook as read books. A distinct discrepancy! But I haven't found a comfortable solution yet.)

My recent books read — excluding manuscripts — include two urban-fantary novels about a Hell-fighting Keeper, a New Adult novel about the children of fallen angels, Lois McMaster Bujold's astonishing novel Paladin of Souls (which has given me a strong new protagonist to identify with), and a brilliant scholarly book on readers and the construction of regional identities. It fits beautifully with my own academic work and I have a research project turning somersaults in my brain. But stilll! That's August's work.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to some vacation days and the restorative power of the West Coast.

With hope that I'll check in more often in the next half, I remain,

Your correspondent,

L

Editors say weird things

So this came tripping out of my mouth a moment ago...

So 'hairspray' is closed.

All I can say is it means something to me.

And I probably shouldn't edit to Deadmau5, either.

Since it's topical right now

Last year I read Campus Confidential: 100 Startling Things You Don't Know About Canadian Universities by Ken S. Coates and Bill Morrison (Lorimer, 2011). Whether you're a student (or a prospective student), a parent, a faculty member, an administrator, or simply an interested Canadian, this provocative book will get you thinking about the purpose, efficiency, value, and sustainability of university education in Canada.

I can't truthfully say that I liked this book. I fundamentally disagree with many of its basic positions and attitudes. Still, there are many passages that I believe, from my subjective experiences as both a recent graduate student and a faculty member, are spot on. This book should inspire conversation about what the real purpose of a university education should be — or could be. There's certainly value in that discussion, particularly right now in Alberta, as the minister of Advanced Education tries to reframe what a university education is and means.

My Five-Star Bookshelf: A Coda

I would never have guessed when I started this exercise that it would take me the better part of a year to work through my twenty-nine five-star texts. Interestingly, in the course of writing those book talks, I identified a few books that should likely be added to the list, but I haven't added them, nor have I discovered any other books that deserve my five-star rating. Here are a few of my close contenders (4.5 stars), though, just for the sake of interest:

Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Tony Bennett et al., New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society

Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road

Lorna Crozier, The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things

JonArno Lawson, A Voweller's Bestiary

Martine Leavitt, My Book of Life by Angel

Toni Morrison, A Mercy

Bryan Talbot, One Bad Rat

Jo Walton, Among Others

I wish some of my favourite authors could write more books. I'd love a new Tom Robbins novel. I just checked and Jaclyn Moriarty has a new novel coming out this spring! And of course I have an unread John Irving sitting on my to-read pile upstairs. And an unread Atwood waiting for me to finish some major project or other — I bought it as a reward–incentive. And a couple of memoirs. And another few hundred books I mean to get to, sooner or later...

You will notice that several of the books on the 4.5-star list are for children or young adults. As I mentioned earlier, my professional interests — and perhaps my academic interests as well — are moving toward a deeper exploration and appreciation of YA texts.

When we finally build my longed-for library in the basement, I intend to recatalogue my books on LibraryThing. Perhaps there will be some shaking up of my five-star list at that time. In the meantime, I'm glad to have embarked on the writing exercise — despite that something intended to take a few weeks stretched on to months and months. Oh, poor players, we.

 

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Twenty-Seven

 
Ronald Wright, The Illustrated Short History of Progress

I missed my chance to hear Ronald Wright speak at the University of Alberta (in my own doctoral department!) in late 2012 and so regret that.

I received this book as a publisher's sampler. (What a joy it is to be an academic: free books!) This book, however, is one I should have read regardless. It's an important book, accessibly written and bearing a profound message: a society cannot advance past its natural carrying capacity, and our current global society is quickly encroaching on this critical boundary. This is highly effective environmental communication, entwined in history, cultural criticism, anthropology, and sociology.

This book, which was a Massey Lecture about a decade ago and subsequently a Canadian bestseller, is particularly enhanced by illustrations. (I must confess here that I also read an illustrated version of The Da Vinci Code, which I think made that book a much more compelling text — but nowhere near a five-star book.) I challenge you to read The Illustrated Short History of Progress and not feel moved to change the way you live. In small ways — and maybe in larger ways, too — I have, and thus this book is another that has changed my life.

And so endeth the list.

What not to do in the first week of April

So you have a doctorate and a pile of marking eight feet tall. You could be marking, or writing a paper, or reading an insightful book. Or you could do this.

"Bear"

(to the tune of "Hair" as performed by The Cowsills)

She asks me why

Why I'm a hairy guy

I'm hairy noon and night

Hey, I'm a fright

I'm hairy high and low

Don't ask me why

'Cos I don't know

It's just the way I'm bred,

Like Charles Darwin said,

Darling...

Give me a den with bears

Tall, beautiful bears

Biting, frightening,

Rending, mauling, tearing

Look at that one there: bear!

Shoulder height or taller: bear!

Here's the baby, there's the mama,

Look out for the daddy, daddy...

Bears! (bears bears bears bears bears bears oh)

Fear them, revere them

Just don't try feed them

They're bears.

They don't mind a stiff breeze

And they love to climb trees

A hole in a hill's a good lair

A coat full of fleas

A hive full of honey bees

Or roots and berries

There ain't no words

For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder

Of the...

Bears! (bears bears bears bears bears bears oh)

Fear them, revere them

Just don't try feed them

They're bears.

Their fur is long, straight, curly, fuzzy

Snaggy, shaggy, ratsy, matsy

Oily, greasy, fleecy, shining

Gleaming, steaming, flaxen, waxen

Brown or black or golden

Bears, they are so hairy

If you try to poke one you'll be

Mangled, wrangled, tangled

Like spaghetti

Oh say can you see

My claws?

If you can,

Then you're much too close.

O'er the mount—
O'er the mount—
The bear goes

over the mountain
where he sleeps for eight months

No, never has to diet

And he can sleep for eight months

Oh, give me a den with bears
Tall, beautiful bears

Biting, frightening,

Rending, mauling, tearing

Now won't you give a care for bears?

Black or Kodiak bears?

Here's the baby, there's the mama,

Look out for the daddy, daddy...

Bears! (bears bears bears bears bears bears oh)

Fear them, revere them

Just don't try feed them

They're bears! (bears bears bears bears bears bears oh)

Fear them, revere them

Just don't try feed them

They're bears!

Bears bears bears bears bears bears bears bears

Bears bears bears bears bears bears bears bears

Bears!

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Twenty-Six

 
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas

Remember that I wrote that Virginia Woolf is one of the most influential literary figures in my personal literary canon? These two books have been important to me for so long that I can barely remember a time when they weren't touchstones of my thinking: the first for asserting women's right to write and the second for critiquing the material structures of patriarchy that concentrate power and wealth in a small number of male hands at the expense of social justice.

OK, so Virginia Woolf is not a raving socialist. But she was arguably influenced by her husband, Leonard Woolf, who was (well, maybe not the raving part). She was also influenced by the suffrage movement and first-wave feminism (not that it was called that in Woolf's day). A Room of One's Own, a series of linked essays, traces the emergence of women writers (she would do so again, more humorously, in Orlando) and the struggles they must overcome for their art, and famously claims that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." With sharp wit and cutting insight, Woolf imagines a line of maternal descent quite different from Bloom's "anxiety of influence" demonstrated most particularly, in Woolf's era, in T.S. Eliot's writing. Sadly, despite the advances women writers made in the twentieth century, we may now be in a retrograde period, wherein women artists seem to be losing ground and influence again. And that's perhaps where Three Guineas comes in.

Three Guineas is a response to a request Woolf received to contribute funds to anti-war work. Woolf's narrator declares that she would contribute except — The text (in effect a series of essays) explains how she feels funds might be directed to prevent war, rather than through a contribution to the letter-writer's society, through economic equality between the sexes, through education, and through an acknowledgement of the destructive force of patriarchy. Reading this text as an eighteen-year-old made real and immediate for me ideological ideas that were, until then, abstract to the point of being almost incomprehensible.

These texts together have underpinned my academic work for some twenty-five years. And of course I have moved far beyond Woolf's perspectives — and was fortunate enough to have been born in the second wave of feminist daughters. Still, I owe a tremendous intellectual and philosophical debt to these books of Woolf's, and they remain among my favourite five-star texts.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Twenty-Five

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

When I was an undergraduate, I had the great good fortune to take a year-long survey course in women's literature. We read almost everything in the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, along with another dozen or so additional books: that in itself was a transformative experience. Mrs Dalloway, however, was one of the additional texts (my professor must have loved Woolf because we read a lot of her work) and remains one of my most beloved books — ironically so, since Clarissa is a woman of privilege and represents a world I should be glad to see gone.

If you know anything about me, you know that Virginia Woolf is one of the most influential literary figures in my life. I have read most, but not all, of her books and have read extensively about her — I've even had the opportunity to teach a couple of her essays; and I continue to be interested in Woolf and her writing, although my overall academic focus has changed. When I was doing my master's work in English, I took a course in book history in which I was able to examine books from the original Hogarth Press, the press Leonard Woolf set up as occupational therapy for Virginia. And although the probability has since been challenged by librarians at the Bruce Peel, I continue to believe that Virginia herself laid in the end papers in the Hogarth books we handled — that some essence of Woolf still endures in the physical object. For a Modernist, I can be a ridiculous romantic!

And so Mrs Dalloway. The novel takes place over a day while Clarissa Dalloway plans a party. Her path crosses with friends, relatives, and strangers, and their lives intersect in unexpected and haunting ways. Lines and images from this book still move me deeply. Woolf is a fine artist, and her sentences are astonishingly well crafted; I find her writing exquisite, although I recognize that it's not to everyone's taste. Woolf is a little out of fashion right now — well, Modernism generally is — and that's too bad because Woolf's writing is so elegant and lucid and sometimes funny. The plot of the novel isn't much (it makes a terrible film!); what I love about this book is the language, the sentences, the entwined stories — and, frankly, the way Woolf handles Septimus Warren Smith's madness and death. The novel's conclusion is utterly beautiful and sad, while at the same time curiously uplifting.

Mrs Dalloway continues to be one of my favourite books from one of my favourite writers. (And yes, I also loved The Hours, although it's not a five-star book for me.) As you will see, however, this is not the only Woolf text to have affected me so thoroughly.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Twenty-Four

 
Aritha Van Herk, No Fixed Address

I discovered this book shortly after graduating from my BA. If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that many of my favourite texts involve a focus on place; this one certainly does. It is a novel of many themes, but one of them is this place, Alberta.

Arachne Manteia is a travelling underwear salesperson (there were apparently no La Vie en Rose or La Senza shops at this time), criss-crossing Alberta in a very distinctive vehicle. She has a series of unusual experiences; the novel plays with the concept of the picaresque. At one point, Arachne walks into the Cluny General Store (see an image here), a moment at which the real and imagined worlds merge. Van Herk's description is excellent, and you will experience the hotel rooms, the little towns, and maybe the men as if you were Arachne. This is such a fun novel!

From this book I went on to read The Tent Peg, Van Herk's third novel, which I also loved. Only later did I go back to read Judith, her prize-winning first novel, which is also very smart and unusual — and definitely situated in this place. In the last few years, though, I've lost my taste for Van Herk's work; there are so many other texts competing for my attention. Still, writing about No Fixed Address reminds me how much I enjoyed it, and I hope you will read it, too.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Twenty-Three

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

I read this book for the first time in 1985, as a required text for English 20. I read it in a weekend, caught up in the family saga, the astonishing characters, the Biblical exegesis and the American philosophy. Reading this book encouraged me to discover other Steinbeck novels, to study existentialism, and, by extension, to become a student of literary Modernism. I can almost draw a line from this novel to my master's work in English, and I can confidently relate this novel to so much of the reading I've done since leaving high school. This is truly a central text in my personal canon.

And I ADORE the character Sam Hamilton. Having read the novel so many times, I feel I know Sam personally. Sam is probably my favourite character in literature, and I urge you to read the novel simply to meet this astonishing figure.

This was my second high-school Steinbeck novel, the first having been Of Mice and Men, which my English 10 teacher required us to read the year before. I have of course read The Grapes of Wrath, as well as several of Steinbeck's lesser-known novels. That said, I've managed to miss some of his other high-profile books, a terrible admission from a self-professed Modernist specialist. But there's time to go back and read those that I've missed. (I'm more into the women of Modernism, and the ex-pats, anyway.) I imagine, however, that I will continue to reread East of Eden every few years for the rest of my life: it is always poignant, striking, vivid, and inspiring.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Twenty-Two

 
Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

Thinking about this novel takes me back to long summer days in the garden of our St Albert house and to the utter abandonment one experiences when reading truly outstanding books. There is a joy to reading certain books that only English majors seem to understand. This is one — such a gloriously beautiful book!

I had read some Stegner (The Big Rock Candy Mountain) in my twenties. And one of his short stories, too. I can't even remember now why I read Crossing to Safety, but I am so glad I did. Stegner has created breathtakingly gorgeous prose: the book overflows with sentences to re-read and cherish. It's a pity that literary tastes have changed such that writing of this calibre is only inconsistently valued today.

The book is also a compassionate examination of relationships, loyalties, and the gifts we receive. It follows the lives of two couples whose paths entwine when the men meet as young faculty members. One couple is glamorous and outrageous, the other quieter, subtler. We watch their lives advance together through happy and difficult moments. From this description, the novel may not sound very appealing, but the imagery, the storytelling, the characterization, and the prose itself are astonishing. Perhaps we want simply to watch lives like these unfold, or perhaps we long for close friendships like these; the chance to follow Larry, Sally, Sid, and Charity feels rare and special — at least to me.

From this novel I moved on to Angle of Repose, another masterful, award-winning novel. But I prefer Crossing to Safety. Whether it's the academic setting, the images of nature, the study of commitment, self, and identity, or just its seemingly effortless craft, this book stands among my favourite reading experiences of the last decade. I hope you too will read it.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Twenty-One

Andrew Sayer, The Moral Significance of Class

The Moral Significance of Class is another crucial book — perhaps the most crucial book — from my dissertation work. As Sayer makes clear, class is not merely a matter of income, a level of education, or a practice of manners. Class has to do with the constant conflict between those who have power and those who don't, and this conflict necessarily has a moral edge. From the opening words of the book — "Class is an embarrassing and unsettling subject" — Sayer reminds us that a different world is possible; this social organization is only one of the options, and when we make choices that reduce the dignity and social participation of others, those choices also have a moral edge.

Discovering this text helped me to feel confident to take a normative position in my dissertation, which is to say that I make judgements in my diss: I argue that what is isn't good enough and could be better. These are unusual claims in a dissertation, but they felt — and feel — right for me.

What I particularly like about this text is that it's written in a strong voice with a wry sense of humour. For instance, at one point Sayer remarks, "class inequality would not be acceptable if only the dominant classes were nicer!" It is also deeply engaged in human dignity, as this comment shows: "The appropriate response to situations in which goods (whether objects, behaviours or institutions) are monopolized by particular groups is to enable equal access to them. The appropriate response to situations in which 'bads' are unequally distributed is to eliminate them, not distribute them more equally."

I refer to Sayer's work throughout my dissertation, although moreso for research methods than for his discussion of class. Still it is this book, and this treatment of class, that provided a significant breakthrough and energized my final few months of writing. Which of course changed my life.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Twenty

 
Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

I was introduced to Tom Robbins' writing in high school. My first Robbins novel was Jitterbug Perfume, which is an intoxicating book and probably should also be on this list. Soon after reading Jitterbug Perfume, I found Another Roadside Attraction, a book that truly changed my life. It is a surreal romp from the forests of Washington to the Vatican and back again, set in the age of love and flowers. It involves football and Southern boys, a baboon, the Corpse, a flea circus, talking produce, and lots and lots and lots of drugs, sex, and music. It is a quintessential novel of the Sixties (despite having been published in 1971). I have read it countless times; it is a feel-good novel and always reminds me of very happy times.

I ADORE Robbins' character Amanda Ziller. She is with me much of the time. She is likely the character from literature I'd most want to be (at least when I'm not in a Virginia Woolf phase). This novel also taught me how to walk in the rain and how to enjoy mushrooms. It taught me about scent. It taught me about friendships that endure. It taught me to be tickled by language. The sixteen-year-old I once was was astonished that a book like this even existed; the wistful would-be writer I am today wishes I had the imagination to create something like it.

I can't begin to summarize the plot of this novel. It's more than a story; it's an experience. If you don't enjoy absurdism, if you can't read magical realism, if you're glad that the hippies were wrong, you should give this novel a pass. But if you're willing to alter your thinking — and maybe your life — Another Roadside Attraction is an outstanding place to start.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Nineteen

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James Reaney, Colours in the Dark

I read this play late in my fourth-year undergrad experience. I was taking a course in contemporary Canadian drama. (This was the same year that Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love was produced at the Kaasa Theatre and later at the Roxy; it was also the same year that I first saw Goodnight, Desdemona... produced — see above.) Although I didn't know it at the time, Colours in the Dark was the play I had been waiting my whole undergrad career to read.

Reading contemporary Canadian plays was an eye-opening experience for me at this point. Of course I had read Shakespeare in high school and in first- and second-year university. And of course I had read modern plays in high school English, too: Twelve Angry Men, The Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman. You know, standard-issue drama that every "well-educated person" should have read. But reading Romeo and Juliet and Tennessee Williams is very different from reading the plays of Sharon Pollock and David Fennario. Most importantly, they write the drama of Canada, of places I have seen and lived in; and I could stage the plays in my mind (for that, I'm grateful for several years of receiving comp tickets to the Citadel and the Kaasa in my teens). Reading Blood Relations and Balconville and Leaving Home and The Donnellys excited my literary imagination in ways that previous drama units had not. (It probably didn't hurt that I was dating someone who lived and breathed the theatre, too.)

At the same time, I was immersed in my early study of Modernist poetry, which I would pursue further through my master's work. Colours in the Dark, for whatever reason, pulled Canadian drama, Modernist poetry, and my sense of place together in a dazzling way. I love this script: it's surreal and dreamy and very much of its moment — and quite Canadian. It contains stage directions that are literally impossible to enact. But I would certainly like to see a director try!

You're not likely going to read this play, but if you did, I hope you would have as eye-opening an experience of the drama of place and time as I did.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Eighteen

Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

I read The Golden Compass almost a decade ago at the encouragement of my young friend Kate. I loved that book and immediately read The Subtle Knife, the follow-up book in the series. I had to wait a few months before I read The Amber Spyglass, though, and I'm glad: I think it's the strongest book in the trilogy. The whole series could easily appear in my five-star list, but this book, in which Lyra and Will's missions and relationship develop fully, is certainly my favourite, the text with which I identified most immediately and completely. It changed my relationship with texts for children and young adults and led me to take courses in my doctoral preparation that I might not otherwise have taken; these have subsequently led to publishing and research directions I will likely pursue for the rest of my career.

If you haven't read the His Dark Materials trilogy, or at least seen the film The Golden Compass, I cannot begin to explain the plot of this series. Suffice to say it is an alternative-Earth fantasy for young adults, with many steampunk elements. It begins in Oxford but eventually spans the globe and other realms. The series might be read by upper elementary students, but I suspect the philosophy in the text would be meaningless to many children. For people who have begun adolescence and the process of individuation, though, the series poses important questions about the self, power and control, loyalty and friendship, and spirituality: big questions that many of us spend our adult lives contemplating. Pullman didn't intend the novels to be read only by young people, and I would definitely encourage adults to read this series. It thoughtfully explores themes of innocence and knowledge, love and sexuality, divine purpose, and much else.

And I adore the daemons! After reading the first two books in the series, I wanted a daemon, and for days after I finished The Amber Spyglass I felt incomplete without my own daemon.

If you enjoy speculative fiction and are looking for a text that will encourage you to think critically about what you know and believe, this series — and this book in particular — will make an excellent choice.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Seventeen

Alistair Macleod, No Great Mischief

I was a graduate student doing my MA before I learned about Alistair Macleod's fiction. I am so glad I was introduced to his writing, though, because I love his short stories and, even more, his novel No Great Mischief.

No Great Mischief is a novel of Cape Breton. It's also a family saga, and a novel of separation and reunion. And, since it seems to be a theme lately, perhaps also a novel of redemption. The most famous line from this novel provides its most apt thematic summary: "All of us are better when we're loved."

This novel has won numerous awards and is the subject of publishing lore, as Douglas Gibson has told and retold the story of wresting the near-final manuscript from the author in order to see it published before Doug retired. Referring to the title itself, critics have compared the plot to the history of Canada itself. What was life-changing about this novel for me was its fusion of story, technique, and artistry. Every word is perfect; I lingered over the text, read it lovingly. As I am someone who consumes texts professionally, reading in this manner is striking and memorable. The story of love, faith, struggle, and belief in human dignity is arresting and profoundly moving. This novel may bring you to tears; it is certainly worth your time and attention. I hope you will read it.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Sixteen

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Ann-Marie MacDonald, Goodnight, Desdemona (Good Morning, Juliet)

This book found its way to a position on my list as live theatre. I have seen this text enacted on stage three times and have re-read the script many times because it is such a pleasure. If you have any fondness for Shakespeare, this text will encourage you to rethink what you know and to reconsider what you believe. This text has special resonance for me, though, because of the time and circumstances of my discovering it.

Perhaps you know Ann-Marie MacDonald as the author of Fall on Your Knees (a novel that didn't quite make my five-star list but is very, very close). She is also an actor and a playwright — or at least, she wrote this play. Goodnight, Desdemona is the story of Constance Ledbelly, a failing academic who is on the verge of discovering the secrets to Romeo and Juliet and Othello: they weren't supposed to be tragedies but comedies, and the lead female characters weren't supposed to die. But to learn this secret, Constance must enter the texts themselves. Comedy ensues.

Goodnight, Desdemona is funny: funny enough that your core may hurt from laughing. There is great word play and tight script-writing. The text is also sharply feminist. In short, there's a lot to enjoy in the book — even more if you get to see the text on stage.

If you enjoyed Shakespeare in Love, you will enjoy Goodnight, Desdemona. It is witty and irreverent and pointed and thoughtful — qualities that make the best theatre, and that make for good reading generally.

Top 25 plays for 2012

 

Two thousand twelve has likely been the most unusual year of my life to date, and I see the year reflected clearly in my Top 25 playlist from iTunes. I find the tenacity of certain songs amusing, the appearance of new music encouraging. Some of these songs make me think of clear summer mornings on my new bicycle, others of the persistent circuits of living. And some likely seem random and inconsistent — but I never forget the power of my inner fifteen-year-old girl.

Maroon 5, "Moves Like Jagger"

Muse, "Madness"

Deadmau5, "The Veldt"

ABBA, "Summer Night City"

Lady Gaga, "Judas"

Siouxsie and the Banshees, "This Wheel's on Fire"

ABBA, "Take a Chance on Me"

Kim Wilde, "You Keep Me Hangin' On"

Jenson Interceptor, "Tiny Thing"

Amanda Palmer, "Map of Tasmania"

Florence and the Machine, "What the Water Gave Me"

Hawksley Workman, "Smoke Baby"

Nickelback, "Burn It to the Ground"

Roger Whittaker, "Kilgarry Mountain"

Jimmy Rankin, "We'll Carry On (Prelude)"

Christina Aguilera, "Dirrrty"

Milla, "Electric Sky"

ABBA, "Waterloo"

Caramell, "Caramelldansen"

Kate Bush, "Be Kind to My Mistakes"

The Doobie Brothers, "Long Train Runnin'"

The Irish Rovers, "Lord of the Dance (Live)"

Hair Soundtrack, "The Flesh Failures"

Deadmau5, "Raise Your Weapon"

Loggins and Messina, "House at Pooh Corner"

I'm resetting my iTunes play counts on January 1. Through the music I'll chart the journey through the next twelve months. Looking forward to seeing what they bring.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Fifteen

Margaret Laurence, The Diviners

This extraordinary meta-fictional novel is one of my very favourite books ever. I adore this text! If I ever taught literature, I would teach this book; if I could think of a way to use it to teach either grammar or editing, I would teach this book. It is exquisite in its concept and execution, and I know I will read it again and again before I die.

The Diviners is the pinnacle text of Laurence's Manawaka books. It is the narrative of Morag Gunn, a writer who is attempting to tell an important story. When she is young, Morag is adopted and raised by parents scorned by the "good" people of Manawaka. She does, however, have a fleeting friendship with Jules Tonnerre, a Métis boy. As a young woman, Morag works as a local reporter; reporting on a fire drives her away from Manawaka and into university, where she falls in love with and eventually marries a professor. After several stultifying years as the wife of an academic, Morag leaves to follow her own art — and her own heart. This storyline is developed through extended flashbacks; in the present tense of the story, Morag is fighting with her own daughter, Piquette, who is becoming a young woman herself and wants to understand her family history. The resolution is not necessarily happy but represents the potential for new understanding, new beginnings.

There are so many issues in this novel: class and poverty, Canadian racism and biases, personal histories and mythologies, early feminism, an exploration of intellectualism, the artist's need for isolation and outsider status, the possibility of renewal... The writing is sharp and insightful, and the characters are rich and fascinating. The novel is also absolutely Canadian, rooted deeply in the land and place. This is literary writing at its best, inclusively so: it is high brow and conceptual while simultaneously critiquing these positions. Brilliant, just brilliant.

I cannot recommend this novel enough, yet I have met many people who haven't read it, people whose only exposure to Margaret Laurence is The Stone Angel (not one of my favourites but still a great book). The Diviners is also notorious in Canadian literature as a book that is routinely censored in Canadian high-school classrooms (especially in Ontario); as a result of its being censored, The Diviners is rumoured to be the reason Laurence stopped writing: it was her last novel. (The truth of this rumour is considerably more complicated, though, as biographies of Laurence have since revealed.)

If you want a book with the sweep of a family saga, the rough beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and a deeply personal revelation of various forms of freedom, The Diviners can't miss. I truly hope you will read and enjoy it.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Fourteen

Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ

This novel arrives on my list by way of another of my long-standing interests: censorship. In 1988, when the film version of The Last Temptation of Christ was released, it was censored around the world. Not only did theatres refuse to show it; religious groups organized protests and violent acts were committed in an effort to silence an unconventional artistic exploration of one of the West's most significant figures. When the film finally played at the Princess theatre, of course I had to see it. I found it an overwhelmingly moving and provocative text.

So naturally I read the novel on which the film is based. Kazantzakis is well known as the author of Zorba the Greek, a text I thought I was familiar with through popular culture (and, although I have tried, I have not yet read that novel). At the time, I was an English Honours student, thoroughly immersed in the discovery of history, philosophy, and literature. The novel The Last Temptation of Christ was a profound reading experience for me. It is rapturously, gloriously written and offers a fascinatingly human alternative portrait of Jesus of Nazareth, full of doubt and sensuality. For someone raised outside of Christianity, it was — and is — a culturally defiant and life-affirming text.

One of the lines that remained with me for years is this: "There is only one woman in the world. One woman with many faces." The feminist I was at the time read this line as confirmation of the transcendent being of Woman; the feminist I am now (especially after attempting to read Zorba the Greek) is not so sure. The Last Temptation of Christ remains, however, one of the most intellectually provocative and artistically accomplished texts in my personal canon. For years, I bought copies of the novel as gifts, much as I have done with other books that have moved me deeply. I don't know how the novel struck those readers — if they even read it — but I have always hoped it would speak deeply to them about their own questioning of fate, of determinism, and of the larger cultural story. And not about religion.

It's unlikely that my experience of reading this text will encourage anyone else to read it, and there is of course a massive formal literary apparatus available to anyone who feels inclined to explore the book or its critical reception. For me, however, The Last Temptation of Christ is unquestionably a novel that changed my life, by opening my mind to a different way of reading one of the West's most significant texts. It also reinforced my commitment to freedom of expression, even for those texts I'd rather not see, hear, or understand.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Thirteen

John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

Perhaps it's because I read it between my third and fourth years at university, when I reading a great deal about Christianity and forms of belief, that this novel was so resonant for me. The plot follows two boys, John and Owen, from their childhood to their mature lives. John is the present-day narrator, having left the United States to settle in Toronto. Owen believes he is an instrument of God, born to enact a divine purpose; while the story follows this direction, there is much else going on as well. While there are many familiar Irving-esque themes in the book, there are also some particular ideas and explorations that raise the book above Irving's earlier absurd and sometimes simply comic interests.

To be fair, I should also list The Cider House Rules as one of my five-star books, but Owen Meany reaches slightly beyond Cider House for me because of the character of Owen Meany himself. The Cider House Rules is a novel about extraordinary circumstances with a cast of unusual characters. And for that matter, I might list The Hotel New Hampshire, too, although it's not really a five-star novel despite giving me a long-standing creative motif. For me, A Prayer for Owen Meany is the story of the formation of an unusual character. If you haven't read this book and love character-driven narrative, you should really enjoy this novel.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Twelve

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

While I love all of this novel, what made it a five-star book for me is a line of description of Tea Cake, one of the characters the protagonist marries. It begins, "Ready with his grin." Something about this passage sticks with me even now, years after reading this novel.

But there are many reasons to read Their Eyes Were Watching God. The language is certainly one of them: it's dazzling. Most of the novel is presented in dialect, so acutely captured I can imagine voices speaking the story. It is a Modernist novel, although it defies the sterile and emotionless wasteland that had by the 1930s largely become the Modernist space; Their Eyes is sensual in a wide-ranging way, far beyond sex and sexuality. Their Eyes is also something of a romance, albeit involving a very complicated series of relationships, some of them bleak. Most importantly, it is the text of a black woman writer from an era that would happily have silenced her voice, and simply to read her story is to experience a world that we might never otherwise have known.

This book was not well received on its original publication; apparently the novel required feminist rediscovery and the rise of race studies in the 1980s and 1990s to find its real place in the canon (assuming, of course, that there is such a thing). Another reviewer succinctly captures my wish for this book: "Just read it. Please." Indeed.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Eleven

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Keri Hulme, The Bone People

I read this novel in a course about popular literature and had no idea at the time that it was a prize-winning or important book. What I remember about my initial reading of this book was that it was dazzling, horrifying, and captivating.

The Bone People is the story of Kerewin, an artist who has isolated herself in a tower; Simon, a wild child with a mysterious past; and Joe, the man who is raising Simon despite troubled circumstances. The novel is about various kinds of love that persists despite brutal happenings. It is also a novel about the Maori and the power of myth, story, and language.

At the time I first read this novel, I knew almost nothing about post-colonial discourse or the resistant colonial writer. You don't need this knowledge to enjoy this novel. It is not an easy text to read; you will likely feel the pain these characters endure, and the ending will not necessarily bring resolution. But reading this novel may open our eyes to other ways of being, to other configurations of family, and to other ways of understanding the world.

An assignment I regularly ask my students to complete is an investigation of various literary prizes; I ask them to consider the value of such prizes in the configuration of the literary field, the reputation of the author (and his/her consequent Author Function), and the fortunes of the physical object of the book itself (that is, whether it sells better as a result of the award). The Bone People leaves me intrigued today with many ideas for academic writing; but here I want to convey how I much enjoyed this novel as an undergraduate. In giving me, a sheltered nineteen-year-old Canadian female, a larger, violent but magical view of life, this novel certainly changed my world.

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Ten

Janette Turner Hospital, Charades

I didn't realize how privileged I was to attend the University of Alberta in the late 1980s, when abundant Canada Council funds meant that I could attend a reading from a Canadian writer almost every week of my undergrad life. One of these readers was Janette Turner Hospital, who on that occasion read from Charades (note that the second A is pronounced AH: sha-rahdz). The passage the author read was well selected: tense, unusual, disturbing, full of strange religion and difficult family relationships. I bought the novel a short time later and devoured it, and have reread it several times since graduation. I have also read other novels by Hospital, but none has stuck with me like Charades.

The novel follows a young Australian woman named Charade Ryan, who is searching for her father. Coming from an unusual family, she is acutely aware of language and deliciously tangled in story. Her narrative is by turns erotically coy, brutal, and insightful. Its themes resonated for me at so many levels. Charades is set in Australia and Canada, and ranges from the Holocaust to classical music to theoretical physics. It is exquisitely constructed and very smart, but also emotionally shocking.

Just writing about it now, I want to dig up the book out and read it again. This is a book I give as a gift when I can find it, although it is apparently out of print at this time. If you find it used or in the library, read it. The thousand and one moments of this novel are sure to stay with you.

Oh, not again

So, it must have been a really, really, really slow news day to generate this story.

Really? The whole Habitat for Humanity thing wasn't enough? This former "alderman" felt he needed more press time? OMG.

So glad I don't live in St Albert any longer, so I don't have to be associated with the idiocy of some people who do.

 

My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Nine

David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism

As the writing of my dissertation went on and on (and on and on), my focus began to shift from the English Language Arts curriculum per se to the construction of class identity through the politicization of text. One of the most important sources for my specific focus on Alberta political economy was A Brief History of Neoliberalism. If you want to understand concepts like the shrinking of the middle class, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the destruction of the so-called Nanny State, you need this book. It will help you recognize both the specific political entity that is neoliberalism and the historical and philosophical contexts that brought it into being — and that allow it to remain strong. The retrenchment of economic survival of the fittest following the systemic weakening of the welfare state is not an accident, he explains: it is a deliberate and calculated effort to protect the interests of the power elite around the world.

David Harvey is really, really smart. He doesn't just make a claim; he makes an argument, and he knows what he's talking about. He's critical. His analysis of the political economy of developed and some developing countries is acute (look Harvey up on Youtube if you want to see/hear him in action). This book, as well of some of his others, gave me both a model to describe what I perceived in my own location and had read about in other texts and the analytical tools for situating and connecting various forms of neoliberal thought. Given my theoretical orientation, the careful parsing of classical liberal, contemporary liberal, and neoliberal (and of conservative and neoconservative) is crucial. Harvey's text was, and remains, an important basis for explaining the significance of my dissertation topic.

But there's another layer to Harvey's book. Following the familiar paraphrasing of Marx, Harvey does not merely explain the world; he seeks to change it. He is not arguing for the sake of argument; he is arguing to spark, to rally, to mobilize. We are best prepared to struggle for change when we can recognize that this world is structured to benefit one group at the expense of another and that another world is possible. This perspective is perhaps the greater lesson of this book, and Harvey provides strong, global systemic analysis to support your local, specific resistance.

OK, you probably won't read this book. It's dense and difficult, and many political philosophers have moved beyond class analysis in the aftermath of George W. Bush and the War on Terror. But I promise you, this text is worth the effort you'll put into it. And just having it on your bookshelf may make you feel smarter and stronger — and may remind you that fair change is possible.