Saturday July 05, 2008
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Michael Lindsay from Toronto writes:The 50 Greatest Books must include an astonishing study of evil. I nominate East of Eden, by John Steinbeck. Posted June 26, 2008, at 1:33 p.m. ET
Couplings
INTERCOURSEBy Robert Olen ButlerChronicle, 216 pages, $24.95SNUFFBy Chuck Palahniuk Doubleday Canada, 197 pages, $29.95WILLINGBy Scott Spencer Ecco, 244 pages, $26.95The writer of any literary book about sex has a problem right off the bat. He - in the case of the following books, all writers are male - has immediately set the reader up to expect dirty parts, with which the linguistic feats in between must wimpily compete. Should the author simply wish to comment on sexual mores without stirring anyone's loins, he faces an uphill battle; he has produced a cookbook without any recipes.
If everybody had an ocean ...
I tell you surfing's mighty wildIt's getting bigger everyday ...The Beach Boys, Surfin'Safari, 1962As a professional sport, surfing is completely ignored by the North American media. One might be vaguely aware of six-time world champion Kelly Slater, surfing's Tiger Woods. But who's No. 2? No clue.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Above, Miner with ''white hands,' from Cage Call: Life and Death in the Hard Rock Mining Belt (Photolucida, unpaginated, $18), photographs by Louie Palu, text by Charlie Angus.Above right, Detail from Conservatory Water, Looking North, Central Park, New York, 1994, from Utopia/Dystopia: Geoffrey James (National Gallery of Canada/Douglas and McIntyre, 176 pages, $60).
PAPERBACKS
BECOMING HUMANBy Jean Vanier, Anansi, 163 pages, $18.95Vanier's Massey Lectures expound his proposition that opening ourselves to other people could radically change our communities, our relationships and ourselves.
Bridging the 'two cultures' of arts and science
ONE TO NINEThe Inner Life of NumbersBy Andrew HodgesDoubleday Canada,328 pages, $29.95PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTISTBy Jonah LehrerHoughton Mifflin,242 pages, $26.95
Smartypants writes book
KLUGEThe Haphazard Constructionof the Human MindBy Gary MarcusHoughton Mifflin,211 pages, $26.95It would be nice to be able to say that Kluge, by Gary Marcus (a student of the esteemed Steven Pinker), is a good book, but it's not. In fact, it's not really a book at all. It's a gimmick, and an unfair gimmick at that.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
CANADA IN COLOURSBy Per-Henrik Gurth, Kids Can, 24 pages, $14.95, ages 2 to 4Per-Henrik Gurth's skills as a graphic designer are on display here in a sequence of vibrant illustrations in which the defining element of a black pen is used to good effect. Canada and colours go hand in hand in double-page spreads, with minimal text, the first of which is, ''White snow blankets the ground.''
Our special of the day? Moose nose
THE ORDER OF GOOD CHEERBy Bill Gaston Anansi, 352 pages, $29.95The prospect of environmental catastrophe has begun to haunt contemporary fiction. It is oblique, matter-of-fact or otherwise unsensational - and all the more frightening for it. ''[I]f suburban old ladies with not much life left to lose now talked this way - that is, as advocates for Greenpeace - then the planet indeed must be in trouble,'' is how Andy Winslow, protagonist of one strand of Bill Gaston's The Order of Good Cheer, puts it. His garden, in present-day Prince Rupert, B.C., is disappearing into the sea, and a 15-mile stretch of dead fish has turned up along the coast overnight.
The subject is itself
When it comes to imaginative influence, size really doesn't matter. Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges, a slim collection of 17 short stories that first appeared in 1944, has, over time, made waves in the pond of literature that only a door-stopper of a prose epic such as Joyce's Ulysses can match. Borges's collection whispered from the library that literature had a new subject: literature itself. A glance at what happened to that collection lets us track how that whisper became a roar, and how a writer could surf a wave that he himself had started.
Here. There. Nowhere. Somewhere
THE ROARING EIGHTIESAnd Other Good TimesBy Norman SniderExile, 286 pages, $29.95JOIN THE REVOLUTION, COMRADEJourneys and EssaysBy Charles ForanBiblioasis, 185 pages, $19.95
A novelist in journalist's clothing
MY LIFE AS A DAMEThe Personal and the Political in the Writings of Christina McCallEdited by Stephen ClarksonAnansi, 384 pages, $32.95
Perry Mason is a big fat liar
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHTThe Secret Life of Raymond BurrBy Michael Seth StarrApplause, 266 pages, $24.95Emmy-winning actor Raymond Burr's salary rose to $2-million within eight years of playing Perry Mason (Erle Stanley Gardner's fictional crusading lawyer who never lost a case to his arch-nemesis, DA Hamilton Burger). Later, he played wheelchair-bound cop Robert T. Ironside (the first disabled protagonist on TV) for eight seasons. His most memorable film roles were as a bespectacled, cane-carrying DA who tries to send Montgomery Clift to the electric chair in A Place in the Sun (1951), and the hulking, menacing killer in Rear Window (1954), who almost knocks off James Stewart.
This Boat is yar
THE BOATBy Nam LeBond Street, 272 pages, $27.95The debut story collection by Nam Le could easily become a cacophony of voices. Just 29, he's Vietnam-born, Australia-raised and spends much of his time in the United States. His central characters range even further: from a teenage gunman in Latin America to a troubled American woman adrift in Iran, a gruff New York painter, a confused Aussie teen and children living in Hiroshima just before the atom bomb falls.
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 -1Rogue, by Danielle Steel (Dell, $32). 2 38The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown, $28.99). 3 27Love The One You're With, by Emily Giffin (St. Martin's, $27.95). 4 12Fearless Fourteen, by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin's, $30.95). 5 -1The Last Oracle, by James Rollins (Morrow, $28.95). 6 43This Charming Man, by Marian Keyes (Penguin, $24). 7 84Chasing Harry Winston, by Lauren Weisberger (Simon and Schuster, $29.99). 8 53Sail, by James Patterson and Howard Roughan (Little, Brown, $30.99). 9 62No Choice But Seduction, by Johanna Lindsey (Simon and Schuster, $28.99). 10 76Bright Shiny Morning, by James Frey (HarperCollins, $28.95).
Sins of the flesh? Bring 'em on!
SEX AND BACONWhy I Love Things That are Very, Very Bad for MeBy Sarah Katherine LewisSeal Press, 269 pages, $16.50 Sarah Katherine Lewis is a size 10 former porn actress/model/dancer bisexual 35-year-old who loves meat, cooking and eating all kinds of meat. Even marrow, even guts. Loves sex. In Sex and Bacon, she combines these two loves: animal flesh for eating and human flesh for ... everything just short of actually ingesting or being ingested. Completely non-judgmental, SKL even loves Britney Spears, dedicating an entire chapter to her. She's funny. Very incorrect. She has swayed me. I had grown practically vegan and into humane farming and so monogamous I don't even look at porn any more, but her book is making me want to lick and suck bacon! And whale meat! And girls!
