Canada Reads Book Club: Let the Debate Begin!

Here we are, primed on the eve of the Canada Reads debate live on CBC Radio One. After all the reading and discussion, we have determined where we are hanging our debating hat. It was not an easy decision, as all the books had much going for them but the final decider was which novel stuck in our head the longest. And that novel was:

So everyone tune in tomorrow - 11:30AM EST, 9:30AM MST - and let the fun begin!

Canada Reads Book Club: Douglas Coupland

We have worked our way through Generation X so time to provide a few dets on its author. Interesting guy but cannot say that we are fans beyond the masterful work of Microserfs. Slightly sad to say it but cannot be denied. We do have enormous respect for someone this mult-talented though!

Brief Biography
- born in West Germany; moved to West Vancouver in 1965
- attended McGill University
- graduated from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design
- wrote and executive produced a television series based on his novel jPod
- codesigned a eight-hectare urban park in downtown Toronto adjacent to the Gardiner Expressway
- selected as the presenter of the 2011 Massey Lectures.

Honours and Awards
- two Canadian National Awards for Excellence in Industrial Design
- nominated for the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean) for Hey Nostrodamus!
- won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction in 2004 for Hey Nostrodamus!
- Everything's Gone Green won the award for best Canadian feature film at the 2006 Vancouver International Film Festival, a film for which he wrote the screenplay
- Generation A finalist for the 2009 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

Interviews and Articles
The Write Stuff
January Magazine







Reviews
The Guardian

Canada Reads Book Club: Update #3

Woohoo - we are over halfway through the books! Though, with the re-read of Fall on Your Knees still to come, perhaps on a page-by-page ratio we may not be as far along as initially thought....mmm....

Anyway, reading is progressing very well and Generation X is now in our clutches. A lot is riding on this novel, as the first read years ago did not leave a positive impression and there is trepidation in picking it up again. But if fellow Edmontonian Roland Pemberton aka Cadence Weapon says to read this book, well then, we are going to give it another shot.

This past week we started posting our reviews/musing on each of the novels. First up to bat was Good to a Fault, and coming up this week will be Nikolski. (And just between us, Nikolski is shaping up to be our favorite of the lot - shhhh, don't tell the others.)

Over the past few weeks we have posted brief bios for Marina Endicott, Nicolas Dickner, and Wayson Choy. We always find it interesting to check up on an author, as it provides an additional lense on the reading experience. Upcoming will be bios for Douglas Coupland and Anne-Marie MacDonald.

And for a little something extra, we took a timeout from reading last week to take on the CBC challenge of picking a novel that we would defend if selected to participate in the Canada Reads event. Our selection did not require any thought at all - The Imperialist - and our defense demonstrates why.

Hope all is going well with those joining us on this journey! Happy reading!

Canada Reads Book Club: Good to a Fault

It is almost too easy to take on the significance of Marina Endicott’s title for her second novel, Good to a Fault. It is a question for the ages – what is good? Everyday events and interactions demonstrate answers to this question, as we judge ourselves and others on a basic principle of what is good and just vs. what is bad and unjust. With Good to a Fault, Endicott places the reader into a specific scenario where what is good and just is presumed already in the plot, prior to eliciting the readers full engagement with the characters. The reader is then faced with tracing through the story a singular dominant idea of when does being and doing ‘good’ become ‘too good’, when does it become a fault.

Good to a Fault revolves around Clara Purdy, “single, childless of course, took care with her appearance; fortyish, and not in good spirits for some time since her mother’s death.” When driving across town one day, Clara ends up in a car accident with the Gage family – father, mother, three kids, and grandmother. Not quite devastating enough that the family car (and temporary home) is totaled, the Gage family is delivered a second knockout blow when mother Lorraine is diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer.

Lorraine is immediately admitted to the hospital for treatment, and Clara makes the almost-too-easy decision to house the rest of the Gage family with her during Lorraine’s treatment. Clara soon becomes a pseudo-mom to the kids as their father Clayton takes off and the grandmother, Mom Pell, turns out to require almost as much care and attention as the children.

It is at the early plot juncture, where Clara and the Gage family literally collide, that Clara’s story within the novel’s pages and within the character’s mind begins to figuratively and speedily collide and unfold in degrees with all manner of items. Her existence fractures into various pieces, each becoming attached to another person within the story and each triggering off additional contemplations as to how deep and how far does Clara’s goodness run.

These pieces inform the novel’s movement forward, with various characters rotating into the narrative’s first chair. Besides Lorraine, there is Darlene/Dolly, the tween daughter of Lorraine and Clayton who struggles between cherishing her love for her own mother and giving in to the physical comforts and caring that are provided through Clara’s middle class mobility. There is Mom Pell, a shrewd and distrustful woman who works hardest at sustaining the barest minimum of ties to everyone, if only to ensure an outlet and audience for her demands. There is also Paul Tippett, the local Anglican priest who is bearing his own collision of what is good vs. bad, both of which are embodied within his relationship with his soon-to-be ex-wife and in his burgeoning intimacy with Clara.

These rotations, however, are incomplete in formation when compared against the number of characters introduced throughout the story. Little insight is provided in the complexities of Lorraine’s brother Darwin, whose presence is significant for Lorraine, the children, and Clara but remains relatively unexplored. The same holds true of Mrs. Zenko, Clara’s elderly neighbor, who always has a kind word and just the right food for any moment. Then there is Grace, Moreland and Fern, Clara’s own extended blood family, who appear and disappearance without any other purpose than to support the construct that Clara is good.

And to realize that construct, there must be the required contrast of who is ‘not good’. The easy answer to this comes in the form of Clayton, whose abandonment of his family at the most stressful points is expected from the point of his introduction. His is an almost stereotypical literary existence, with little to no elements of dimensionality woven into his fabric for even the briefest of contemplations. This is not to say that he does not hold value – all the characters most certainly do – but rather, that his and the other subsidiary characters value is not as exposed or as hidden to make the excavation and consideration of the story’s central themes and questions all the more invigorating, all the more long-lasting.

Good to a Fault is about prose though, and not plot. Endicott herself has admitted this in interviews. Endicott is quite adept at layering situations and words in order to command focused attention. It is through the layering though that the story does not fully realize it own seductiveness. Is Clara a saint or is she condescending by layering her morality on the children? Is it really Clayton who is selfish, or is it Clara? The answers do not come hard and fast, but with a loping gander that uniquely - and this is a testament to Endicott’s fluid and nuanced writing voice - privileges the good within each reader. There are moments however when a jolt, an unexpected plot spark could have quickened the pace just a bit to give the story additional vivid strokes.

But, somewhere in the office, computer, mind, etc. of Marina Endicott is the rest of Good to a Fault. In a CBC.ca interview, Endicott stated that the novel started out at twice the size of its final 363-page length. This is the version that I would like to get my hands on someday. For all its heft and engaging prose, Good to a Fault feels a bit unfinished. I found myself slipping between the dense lines at times, searching for more and more despite feeling simultaneously weighted down by what was visible on the pages. The fragility, the intangible quality of the answers to the questions raised left this reader slightly unsatisfied. The subtly of the story’s conclusionary moments seemed almost like a brush off more than a heartfelt fade out for the characters. And I suppose from this perspective, Endicott’s lovely novel can be seen as evolving into an emblem of its own musings and considerations – good, to a fault.

Canada Reads Book Club: Wayson Choy

Three books down and two to go! Well, actually, we have read all five but feel that we should re-read Generation X and Fall On Your Knees after all these years so all can be fairly reviewed.

Loved, loved The Jade Peony! Kept turning the pages to keep reading the story -- after we had reached the end! Good thing we have All That Matters on order.

Read the first chapter online.

To pass on the love, we have some information on the novel's author Wayson Choy that we just know you want.

Brief Biography
Raised in Vancouver's Chinatown by both his adoptive parents and his extended community.
Attended the University of British Columbia (UBC) in the late 1950s to study creative writing.
Taught English at Toronto's Humber College in 1967-2004, where he was also a faculty member of the Humber School of Writers.
Inducted into the Order of Canada in 2006.

Honours and Awards
The Jade Peony
1996 - City of Vancouver Book Award
1996 - Trillium Book Award (shared with Margaret Atwood)

Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood
1999 - Globe and Mail notable book of the year
2000 - Edna Staebler Creative Non-Fiction Awards
2000 - nominated for a Governor General's Award

All That Matters
2004 - Trillium Book Award
2005 - ScotiaBank Giller Prize Shortlist

Interviews and Articles
Asian Canadian Interview
Quill & Quire Profile



Reviews
Canadian Literature
Curled Up
The New York Times

Canada Reads Book Club: Update #2

Things are picking up speed as we head out of January and into February. We made short work of Nikolski and are almost through The Jade Peony. How is it that we had not picked up these two books before!!

One of our offline book club members finished Fall on Your Knees recently, and sent through the following comments [SPOILERS]:

finished Fall on Your Knees yesterday. my goodness. the way the parents exploit their children and can't let them be happy...not just James but Rose's mother too--I found that betrayal just devastating to read about, that she would let her own daughter be unhappy so that she would fulfill the mother's plan for her, and keep her mother happy. And Mercedes not letting Anthony/Aloysius stay with his mom--maybe he had a good life anyway but you know Frances would have wanted to keep him.

Very creepy stuff.

Reviews forthcoming - yeah yeah, we said this before but we do mean it! We needed to figure out a schedule though as not to get overwhelmed with everything else on the go, including reading the last two books. Reviews will start the week of February 4, with one book covered for each week leading into the Canada Reads 2010 debates on CBC Radio One the week of March 8.

We've got two author mini bios up at the moment - Marina Endicott and Nicolas Dickner - a third on the way for Wayson Choy.

For all you following along online, drop a note (letitreadblog@gmail.com)or comment below and let us know how things are going. Always interested in hearing how others are doing and what you think of the readings.

Canada Reads Book Club: Nicolas Dickner

The second novel in our reading list for the CRBC 2010 book club is Nicolas Dickner's Nikolski (as translated by Lazer Lederhendler). Lots of charm and a rhythmic elegance to the writing that kept our attention on each page. In fact, the novel was such an involving read that it was surprising to realize that it was almost 300 pages. Now that is a sign of a good story, and really good storyteller!

Review is forthcoming (need to sit and reflect a few more days before committing type to screen) but below is some information on Dickner we thought pertinent to share with you all.

Brief Biography
Studied visual arts and literature at university.
Travelled extensively in Europe and Latin America, then settled in Montreal.
Currently a literary columnist for the Montreal cultural weekly Voir.

Honours and Awards
L'encyclopédie du petit cercle
2001 - Prix littéraire Adrienne-Choquette
2001 - Prix Jovette-Bernier
Nikolski
2006 - Prix des libraires
2006 - Prix littéraire des collégiens
2006 - Prix Anne-Hébert
2006 - Prix Printemps des Lecteurs–Lavinal
2008 - Governor General's Award for French to English translation

Interviews and Articles


Reviews
Walrus Magazine
Quill & Quire
The Guardian
The Independent
Montreal Review of Books

Canada Reads Book Club: Updates and Stuff

So things are moving along a tad slowly on the reading front. We blame it on the post-holiday crash blahs. Of course, the touch of procrastination this past week may also be a contributing factor.

As mentioned in the previous Marina Endicott post, a review of Good to a Fault is forthcoming. We promise! Hopefully we will have a couple reviews, submitted by book club members whose arms are being twisted as we type.

For the offline CRBC 2010 book club, one member has made short work of Good to a Fault and The Jade Peony, and is now halfway through Fall on Your Knees. It was a little incomprehensible that they had not read this novel before but we'll got over it.

The rest are making it through the first book or are moving on to the second.

We thought our next read would be Generation x but just not feeling it right know. So, we have turned our attention to Nikolski. Having never read a French Canadian novel translated to English before, we have out fingers cross for the best!

For all you following along online, drop a note (letitreadblog@gmail.com)or comment below and let us know how things are going. Always interested in hearing how others are doing and what you think of the readings.

Happy Reading everyone!!

Canada Reads Book Club: Marina Endicott

The first novel up to bat for CRBC 2010 was Good to Fault by Marina Endicott. Main reason for it being first? We were ashamedly ignorant of the fact that we lived in the same city as Endicott. D'oh! So we thought we would make her novel our first reading priority to make up for said ignorance.

The novel was impressive for a couple reasons ... but you'll have to wait just a wee a bit longer for our review. While we continue to pull our review together though, we thought it important to provide some background information on the author and novel to build a little anticipation!

Brief Biography
Born in Golden, British Columbia in 1958.
Grew up in Halifax and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and Toronto, Ontario.
Worked as an actor before moving to London, England, where she began to write fiction. Returning to Canada in 1984, she went west to Saskatoon and worked in theatre as a director and dramaturge.
Was for many years the dramaturge of the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre.
Lives in Edmonton, Alberta.
Has two children: Will and Rachel.

Honours/Awards
First novel, Open Arms, was a finalist for the 2001 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award.
Open Arms was broadcast on CBC Radio's Between the Covers in 2003 (access through iTunes podcasts).
Long poem, "The Policeman's Wife, Some Letters", was short-listed for the 2006 CBC Literary Awards.
Second novel, Good to a Fault, was a finalist for the 2008 Giller Prize.
Good to a Fault won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Canada and the Caribbean.

Interviews/Articles
Interview and article at CBC.ca.
Interview with Marina over at All Things Said & Done.

Reviews
Quill & Quire
The Globe and Mail
Canadian Literature
Vue Weekly
Book Slut
United Church Observer