ETC: New Spring Release

Announcing my latest release (and the ultimate excuse for procrastination)...

Samuel Atticus (aka Sam, Sam the Man, Salamander, Samwise, Samwidge, and Sam-I-Am) arrived a week earlier than anticipated (see? I can surpass some deadlines), last Tuesday, April 19th.

He's already demonstrated his innate humanity and generosity of spirit by waking me up with my first contractions at the civilized hour of 7 am. He made his entry into the world at 5:45 pm, just in time for me to clean up and change for dinner. Clearly, he has all the makings of a country gentleman. (And you can tell by his thoughtful expression that he's obviously in the 90th -- and perhaps even the 95th -- percentile for wisdom.)

His name, if you're wondering, comes from two of my and Rusty's favourite literary characters: Samuel Hamilton from East of Eden and Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. I love these characters. They're both good, honest men whose morality transcends their time and place. You could do worse for role models. (Also, Sam is the name that Anastasia Krupnik ultimately chooses for her baby brother, and I like that little literary footnote.)

I've got another mondo post half finished, still trying to get caught up on my backlog of books. I've even managed to read 17 whole pages (!) from my current book, Cloud Atlas, in the past week. Whee! After I finish it, I think I'm going to need to read something with a bit less heft.

Anyone have any recommendations for some good one-handed reads? (No, not that kind, cheeky.)

BOOKS: Sweet Vindication!

From CBC.ca:

Canadian author Alice Munro has made Time magazine's list of the world's most influential people.

Others on the list include U.S. President George W. Bush, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and computer baron Bill Gates.

Munro, a multiple winner of both the Governor General's Literary Awards and the Giller Prize, was lauded by the newsmagazine for penning short stories that have a "lucidity equal to Chekhov's."

What did I tell you?

BOOKS: Curse That Blasted Spink-Bottle!

Awww... the Grumpy Old Bookman just posted this about P.G. Wodehouse:

I wonder if anyone reads P.G. Wodehouse any longer? Apart from weirdos like me, that is. And was he ever respectable, in academic terms? I rather doubt it.

I used to wonder the same thing. I discovered Wodehouse when I was a 20-year-old student of English literature. I'm not sure what exactly attracted me to him initially (though I suspect that I was probably just trying to cultivate some pretentious undergrad eccentricities, along with 90 percent of my classmates), but I was quickly and genuinely sucked into the Wodehouseian universe, as complete a literary universe as you'll find in any genre.

Fortunately, I lured my good friend Schimpky into this universe with me, so I had someone off of whom to bounce reference points. For example, if a classmate said something dippy during a seminar, I could mutter, "Don't you think that the stars are God's daisy chain?" or "Every time a wee fairy blows its nose, a baby is born," and Schimpky would chuckle appreciatively. (I never said I wasn't a snotty undergrad. So were you, so don't you judge me.)

I remember finding some incredibly convoluted way to mention Wodehouse to one of my most intimidating profs (who, by virtue of being intimidating, was therefore the most alluring and challenging bait to a professional suck-up like me) during a student/professor mixer. (In retrospect, I can only begin to imagine how much our professors must have dreaded these events.) After telling her that I'd spent the summer addicted to P.G. Wodehouse, she efficiently deflated me by replying, "But after you've read one of his books, haven't you read them all?"

To this day, I still have a lot of respect for that woman.

Notwithstanding the fact that P.G. Wodehouse novels are kind of the early 20th-century equivalent of Sweet Valley High books, I love them and continue to use them as comfort reading. I stopped adding new books to my collection (I have 20 or so of them, but Wodehouse wrote more than 90) when I was standing in a used book store leafing through one and realized that I couldn't even tell if I'd read it already.

But I still have my favourites. I love Bertie and Jeeves, of course, especially The Code of the Woosters (in my opinion, Wodehouse's crowning achievement, and possibly one of the finest comic novels of all time). And you can't go wrong with the Psmith novels (the "P" is silent, as in "ptarmigan" or "psychologist"), particularly Psmith, Journalist.

I think Wodehouse's timelessness can best be summed up with this quote by Evelyn Waugh, which appears on the back of most of Wodehouse's paperbacks:

Mr Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.

I bet Waugh wasn't even trying to kiss a professor's ass when he wrote that.

(It's never too late to hop on the fan train. Get started with this Bloomsbury piece, which lists notable Wodehouse sites.)