Reading 2007

I’ve been dying to read this book since it was released last year, but as I don’t buy mass market paperbacks (and it’s not being released in trade paperback), I had to wait until I could find a used copy of the hardback on the cheap. Having done so, and dutifully raced through it in about a day, I have to say I’m a little disappointed. Allow me to explain. I knew going in that this wasn’t a sequel to American Gods, although it would take place in approximately the same world. It didn’t really feel entirely like the same world, though. To be honest it felt more like Neverwhere. Both novels have some pretty basic similarities; the major protagonist finds his life and his relationship collapsing as he enters a supernatural world just below the surface of his own, a world that has always been there but that he… Continue Reading →

I try not to get into arguments, or even comparisons really, about national literatures. I don’t think whether Canadian books or American books are better is relevant to much of anything, or possible to determine in any case. Who is to judge? As a Canadian I am far more likely to grasp the cultural subtext of what’s going on in a Canadian book, and vice versa. There’s no point, really. However. I also don’t like having The Great Gatsby shoved down my throat every five minutes as to why, no matter how many Atwoods we produce (not quite the metric I would use, but no matter), American literature will always dominate the continent in terms of literary quality. The fact that I find Gatsby trite and dull doesn’t mean I automatically have a book to throw back in response, my nationalist dander having been raised. There’s The Afterlife of George… Continue Reading →

In the interest of full disclosure, I will begin by saying that I am a long-time fan of James Bond. I am not a slavering, unthinking fan; while I enjoyed the action sequences in the Pierce Brosnan incarnation and many of the suave absurdities of most of the post-Diamonds are Forever efforts, for me the definitive Bond will always be the callous brutality of Sean Connery, with Daniel Craig’s vaguely sociopathic return to the character’s roots in Casino Royale coming a close, very close, second. It was in fact the latest Bond film that drew my attention to the recent Penguin re-issues of Fleming’s classic thrillers, complete with lurid covers painted in a vintage 1950s style. I have been reading them in order over the last several months, and so Dr. No marks my sixth literary adventure with the character. Let’s get comparisons with the film Bond out of the… Continue Reading →

It’s going to be impossible to talk about this novel without revealing some plot details, including those of later (and sometimes pivotal) events. So if you haven’t yet read the novel and want to maintain the mystery and the surprise, it may be a good idea for you to read no further, as spoilers will most certainly follow. That being said, most discussions of Special Topics in Calamity Physics focus on a handful of things; the youth and beauty of Marisha Pessl (she is both young and striking, but that’s all you’ll read from me on the subject), the resemblance of her style to Nabokov (which I will discuss later), and the fact that it’s sort of strange for it to take 350 pages for a 515 page novel to really hit its stride; I’ll discuss that as well, but I think the most obvious and important place to begin… Continue Reading →

My first book of the year was Christopher Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. It was, if you’ll pardon the expression, one of hell of a way to start of the year in reading. This book had been recommended to me by a number of friends as being remarkably funny, and one of those friends graced me with a copy for Christmas. Their descriptions of the book intrigued me (the image of a six-year-old Christ resurrecting a lizard by sticking it in his mouth is hard to resist), but I was worried that it would be stupid funny, and I’m not generally a fan of stupid funny. Hearing a few podcasts featuring Christopher Moore didn’t exactly help matters. I should have trusted my friends a little more. This book was amazingly funny, and not stupid funny. When you’re writing a humour book about the childhood of… Continue Reading →