BOOKS: With a Bang AND a Whimper

Before I forget, if you're a listener of CBC Radio One -- or hey, even if you're not! -- I'm going to be on Definitely Not the Opera tomorrow (that's Saturday, for those of you playing along without a scorecard) at just past 1 pm. The theme of this week's show is "Back to the Future", so I'm going to be talking with host Sook-Yin Lee about post-apocalyptic and dystopic literature that freaks my shit out.

And now on to the post proper.

Holy CRAP, am I ever tired today. But it's of the staying-up-too-late-reading variety, and not of the baby-screaming-for-an-hour-in-the-middle-of-the-night variety or the drunken-loogans-yelling-outside-my-house variety, and man, despite feeling like death on wheels, it's strangely enjoyable to be back to my pre-Sam old-school reading-related fatigue. Sort of. Kind of. When I don't feel like throwing up from exhaustion, that is.

But I'm happy to report that the endeavour that kept me up much later than would be considered wise was finishing my fiftieth book of the year. Or if you want to look at it another way, the one hundredth book I've read since starting this entire project. Which begs the questions: is it weird that my tally came out to exactly fifty books two years in a row? Am I unconsciously adjusting my pace to meet this (rather arbitrary) goal? What would happen if I changed my target to, say, sixty-three books? Or one hundred and eleven? These, and other questions you don't give a crap about, will never be answered, because I've grown rather fond of my URL and my tiny goldfish brain won't allow me to commit a new one to memory.

Having already cleverly caveated my way out of writing a particularly good post, I can reassure you that, at the very least, the final three books of this hallowed year two-aught-aught-six were mighty fine. Any negative impressions you may make of them should be blamed squarely on me. (Don't worry. I can take it.)

By a strange coincidence, all of these books ended up in my hands, either directly or indirectly, through the power and influence of other people. This doesn't happen to me very often. I have this funny tendency, which perhaps some of you share, to distrust most people's reading recommendations. Oh, I may nod and smile politely when someone's suggesting a book to me, but my internal monologue is going something like, "Well, I'm sure it's a fine book FOR YOU, but thanks anyway." I'm not saying I'm RIGHT in my assumptions; I'm just saying it's what I do. Which is why it's just best to just thrust a book at me and tell me to read the damn thing. (This works. Really.)

The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (#48)
When my dear friend and Platonic life partner The Fabulous Suzi was in town on her last fly-by visit, we exchanged a bunch of books that we were each done with. I can't remember what I gave her, but I hope it was good, because she gave me The Shadow of the Wind, and while it's something I never, ever in a million years would have thought to pick up for myself, I enjoyed it immensely and found it, plot-wise, probably the best book I've read in months.

The Shadow of the Wind is a sort of contemporary Gothic romance/suspense novel. It's set in Barcelona during and after the Spanish Civil War, and the war provides a (frequently brutal) backdrop for the story about a young boy who finds a rare book that so enthralls him that he spends the next ten years trying to find out more about its author. As he gets closer to the truth, he learns a bit too much and suddenly finds himself embroiled in a tangled mystery that involves runaway lovers, secret weddings, old grudges, and pretty much the entire gamut of Shakespearean devices.

What I loved about this book was its shameless baroqueness. Given that its plot revolves around books, and also given that it's intelligently written, there's no worry about it falling into the guilty pleasure category (not that there's anything wrong with that). But at the same time, it satisfyingly tweaked the same chords in my brain that respond to books and movies such as Jane Eyre and Moulin Rouge. There aren't a lot of books written in these post-ironic times that can be said to do that. Well played, Fabulous Suzi. Well played.

Jenny and the Jaws of Life
by Jincy Willett (#49)
I picked up this book my very own self, but I never would have heard of Jincy Willett if it weren't for Cap'n Ganch, who so generously and pushily (heh) gifted me with a copy of Willett's novel Winner of the National Book Award a while back. I really liked Winner, so when I saw a copy of Willett's short-story collection Jenny and the Jaws of Life at a used bookstore, I picked it up, expecting it to be a good read -- but not prepared for the powerhouse that it ended up being.

This is ostensibly a collection of humorous stories. This is an understatement. This is a misleading understatement. I don't know about you, but when I think of funny short stories, I think of, say, James Thurber or P.G. Wodehouse. I don't think of stories that make you go, "Oh. I see. Those stories were really funny and really well written, but I think I need to go and lie down for a little while. Do you have the number of a good therapist you could recommend? What's that? No, I'm not crying. Oh, wait. I think I am." Winner of the National Book Award, dark and funny though it is, did not sufficiently prepare me for this. Think Dorothy Parker by way of Kurt Vonnegut and David Sedaris.

(This is a recommendation, by the way.)

The Emperor's Children
by Claire Messud (#50)
I can't talk too much about this novel because my friend Libby, who gave it to me, sometimes reads my site, so I have to save all my insightful commentary (provided I actually have any) for our upcoming book date.

(I strongly advocate this book date idea, by the way. It has a bit of the necessary structure of a book club without any of the -- let me be candid here -- need to be diplomatic to nigh strangers whose discernment you suspect. I tried the book club thing once a few years ago, and I almost drove myself crazy trying to pussyfoot through the conversation. Life already requires so much pussyfooting. Must we pussyfoot about books, as well?)

All I can tell you is this is a really, really good book. Really good. I was struck by how much it reminded me in ways (without being at all derivative) of Zadie Smith's On Beauty, so if you liked that book, then yeah, you should probably read The Emperor's Children. (If you've read Smith's other novels and disliked them, as so many people seem to, I can't vouch for those because I haven't read them. But you should still read The Emperor's Children.)

And on that digressive note, what better way to sign off for the year? It just feels right somehow.

P.S. I wrote this entire post while eating chocolate bonbons. Everything they tell you about bored housewives is true.

BOOKS: Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

Ahhh, there's nothing like cruising into the last week of the year with the assurance that you're well into your fiftieth book and nothing -- no, nothing! I defy fate to get in my way! HA! -- will keep you from your goal. More on that in the next day or so, but for now let's engage in a time-honoured ritual as ancient as this sacred festival itself: tallying up our loot.

Before I start, I must recant something I posted a short while back. Remember when I said that it's impossible to shop for a book person (i.e. me) without reference to a cheat list? I was wrong -- and happy to be so. It turns out that if you know someone really well and you're prepared to do some clever lateral thinking you can totally knock the socks off a book person (i.e. me).

You could do what my mom did, and give me a vegetarian cookbook. Now, I already have a healthy number of these, but you can never have too many cookbooks. And getting a vegetarian cookbook from my mother -- a woman who gets vegetarianism about as well as I get Keynesian economics -- well, that touches me a fair bit.

Or you could do what my awesome friend Libby did, and give me a newly released novel that she'd read and loved so much that she wanted me to read it, too, so that we could talk about it together on a book date (a date I'm keenly looking forward to, especially now that I'm two-thirds of the way through the book). It shouldn't have come as a surprise that Libby was able to think around me so deftly; I've known since pretty much the inception of our friendship that she's much, much smarter than I am.

Or you could do what my wonderful Doppelsis did and send me a book that was one of my favourite first books, a book that I loved, a book whose title I didn't even remember, a book that I have only ghost memories of reading, and a book that I never in a million years thought would ever cross my path again. I read it to Sam from start to finish as soon as I opened it. The ending was even more touching than I remember. Fortunately, Sam's too young to mock his poor mom for being too choked up to do more than whisper the words.

Or you could do what I did and totally cheat by getting gifts for other people that you secretly want to read yourself. (What? Don't you look at me like that. We've all done it, and don't you deny it. It's a matter of public record that Baby Jesus weeps over your lies.) In this case, it was new books for ol' Sam, mostly to replace many of the baby board books that we're all just done with, because I have to tell you something: if I read Baby's Favourite Toys one more time I'm going to tell Baby exactly where she can put her bloody toy horn, and I'm not going to feel bad about myself afterward.

Shopping for real story books was ridiculously fun. I stuck mostly to the 3-to-5-year-old section, where Sam scored such classics as Where the Wild Things Are and Corduroy, as well as newer titles like Walter the Farting Dog, Olivia Forms a Band, and Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale. And oh my lord, people, it's such a relief to have real stories in the house -- stories written by people who love words and sounds, and illustrated by people with an eye for the beautiful and the weird -- I can't even begin to describe it. I don't mind re-reading books, if they're good books, so even though we've already read all Sam's new titles more times than I can count, I still find these stories and pictures delightful. Luckily, so does Sam.

Words and pictures, beautiful and weird. What did you get or give along these lines? Anything that amazed and delighted you? I'm home for the week, I have a steady supply of peppermint mocha and mango martinis on standby, and I've got nothing but time to enjoy your comments.

Happy Weirdmas!

Hey, who's to say the original Nativity didn't look like this? (I take no credit for this little slice of holiday fruitcake. For that, you should go here.)

Let me take this moment to hope that you have a very, very happy holiday. I wish for you as many books as your heart desires, and all the time in the world in which to read them.

BOOKS: Ho-Ho-Holy Crap

Should horror-meister Dean Koontz even be ALLOWED to write kid's books? And if so, how is it that a Dean Koontz Christmas story for children -- ominously titled Santa's Twin -- could become so popular that it spawns a sequel?

Somebody hold me.

BOOKS: The Secret Language of Sleep

I've been a fan of Evany's funny, crafty, gifty, pop culture-y blog for some time, so when I heard that McSweeney's had published a book she'd written, I rushed to find out more.

The book turns out to be an easy-to-read little reference tome called The Secret Language of Sleep: A Couple's Guide to the Thirty-Nine Positions. It's a sort of Kama Sutra of sleeping positions, and given that everyone I know seems to complain more about the dearth of slumber in their lives than the dearth of you-know-what, it's an appropriate book for our times.

The positions vary from Melting Spoons ("Classic Spooning for codependents") to Starfish and Conch ("the preferred position for couples who fight well together"), but if you're wondering which position is recommended for you and your special someone, there's an online quiz (of course).

I'm sure you're dying to know Rusty's and my results, so here you go.

Pinching Koala and Tree couples experience a kind of super symbiosis that other sorts of couples (especially vegan couples) only dream of. The harmony that comes from this kind of pairing would be revolting if it weren’t so inspirational, which is why Pinching Koalas and Trees are often surrounded by friends and would-be friends, and their schedules are often booked months in advance.

Try not to be too jealous. And we're already booked up till June, but we're taking reservations in August, after we take a month off to recover.

BOOKS: The Big Book of Holiday Feel-Bad Stories

There's something about this time of year that, without fail, turns me into a total friggin Who.

I'm making lists and checking them thrice. (I'm anal that way.) I'm knee-deep in wrapping paper. I'm renting any holiday special that doesn’t have Tim Allen in it. I'm, if not baking dozens of cookies, at least thinking about it. And thanks to my secular-with-Christian-trappings upbringing, I'm singing EVERY verse to every carol from "We Three Kings" to "Frosty the Snowman".

In other words, I'm milking the holiday of everything it has to offer in every conceivable cultural sector. Except for literature, strangely enough. Until now.

The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
Edited by Alberto Manguel (#47)
After you've read A Christmas Carol a couple dozen times, what’s left? Maybe there's an enormous realm of holiday-oriented literature I've missed out on, but I'm pretty sure not. Which is why I was so excited when, last Christmas, Rusty gave me The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories (which has since been redubbed The Ecco Book of Christmas Stories).

Promising to be a compendium of short stories by some of the best writers in the western world, this book was masterminded by Alberto Manguel, who – despite the fact that I find his writing annoying as all get-out, so much so that I had to give up reading his gratingly pretentious A Reading Diary after only thirty or so pages – is a heck of an anthologist. I may even have squealed when I unwrapped this collection, that’s how excited I was. In fact, I was so adamant about optimizing my appreciation of this book that I've been sitting on it for almost an entire year, waiting for the festive season to roll around so that I could enjoy these stories aside a crackling fireplace… or at least while picking pine needles out of my socks.

After eleven months of anticipation, I can only say that the results were… unexpected.

I don't know what I was expecting. This anthology contains stories by real writers. Serious writers. Writers like John Cheever and Alice Munro and Muriel Spark and Graham Greene and Mavis Gallant. (Watch your toes! Doppelganger's dropping names again!) I can't account for how I got the idea in my head that, from time to time, Alice Munro might secretly like to take herself off for a nice weekend in the country and write some uplifting prose with a feel-good ending. I also don't know how I got the idea that a short story entitled "Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor" might resolve itself with fruitcake and candycanes and group hugs. (And while I'm writing, let me take the opportunity to set the world straight on one thing: being an optimist means suffering crushing disappointment after crushing disappointment, and if you think that's easy, think again. THINK AGAIN.)

Oh, and by the way, ha! I just found this copy inside the book jacket:

Eminently readable, The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories is a celebration of the most magical of seasons.

Lies. Lies, I tell you.

There are exceptions, of course. This book contains a few tales that don't make me feel like sitting quietly on a twelfth-storey ledge and wondering what it all means and why bother anyway. "Winter Dog" by Alistair MacLeod made me cry, in a good way. And the final story in the bunch, Jeanette Winterson's "O'Brien's First Christmas" was a beacon of light – albeit a twisted beacon that bounces off a few funhouse mirrors before it reaches you.

Don't misunderstand me. These are good stories, very good stories. Some of them – particularly Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" and Vladimir Nabokov's "Christmas" – are even great stories. You should read them all. I'll probably even read the whole damn collection again myself, it's that good. But if you're looking for a nice book to curl up with while enjoying your steaming mug of 'nog, look elsewhere.

If, on the other hand, all the syrupy holiday movies of the week are getting to you and you're finding yourself staring down from your cave with a sour Grinchy frown at the warm lighted windows below in the town, this may be just what you need.

BOOKS: Is Any Reading Good Reading?

Students attempt to break record reading popular book:

BRIGHTON - At 11 a.m. Wednesday, the usually bustling Brighton North Elementary School was quieter than is typical, as students joined others around the world to read a few passages from a classic children's book - with a world record to break.

The 476 students at Brighton North took a few minutes to read from Charlotte's Web, the children's story by E.B. White about the friendship between a pig named Wilbur and a spider named Charlotte. As part of its marketing strategy for a new, live-action movie version of the 1952 book, Paramount Pictures and Walden Media, producers of the movie, aimed to familiarize a new generation of children with the book. The film is slated for release Wednesday.

You can read the rest here.

Now, when I first read this article, I was of two minds about it. Allow me to demonstrate using dorky debate-team format.

POINT: Kids are reading!
This is always a good thing and should never, ever, ever, ever-to-the-power-of-infinity be naysayed. Right?

COUNTERPOINT: But dude, it's sponsored by the mainstream film industry!
What have movie folks done for kids' books that we should applaud them for? They've totally FUBAR-ed classics like The Borrowers and Harriet the Spy. And Disney alone is responsible for altering sugar-coating bastardizing ruining pretty much every fairy tale ever written. (Except for Beauty and the Beast. I must admit, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I have an irrational love for that movie that has led me to watch it at least five times in its first theatrical release alone.)

POINT: But kids are reading!
"Sure, the whole thing is a big publicity stunt, but reading chorally helps the students become better readers," says Susan Harris, associate librarian at the school profiled in the article. I didn't know this. Is it true? As a former kid myself, I've always found that a group of children reading in unison sounds like a Gregorian dirge, but perhaps I'm alone in this perception. And if choral reading really does provide children with some extra cognitive development, it's sour grapes to naysay it, right?

COUNTERPOINT: But it's still a shameless shill for a movie!
What have things come to when we let the entertainment industry start affecting the curriculum? Is it just a matter of time before high-school students are performing Saw: The Musical (insert your own pun about musical saws here) in drama festivals? Is this a slippery slope we should fear, or am I just a paranoid hater? (Don't discount the fact that I could be both.)

POINT: It's bringing the young 'uns together in their shared love of a great book!
Apparently, the kids in the article are collaborating on class art projects based on the book. Awww... that's nice. It really is. I feel like making something myself, like maybe a cool wall-size spiderweb made out of twine. I could write "Doppelganger rules" in it!

COUNTERPOINT: Couldn't all this reading and artistic collaboration have been generated independently about any number of great books, and by teachers and librarians, without the impetus of a movie studio?
Would that be so hard? Are kids really so reluctant to read awesome stories that they need the lure of major motion pictures and Guinness records to suck them in? (Teachers and librarians, feel free to school me soundly. I am ignorant in the ways of our school system and today's modern child.)

POINT: But the kids are reading! They really are!
Of the 38 copies of Charlotte's Web in the school's library, all of them had been checked out at the time this article was written.

Of course, you knew the argument would come down on the side of "any reading is good reading." That's my mantra, and I'll stick by it. But if you hear the sound of muffled retching, that's just me with this story stuck in my craw.

The Second Annual 50 Books Holiday Gift Guide

Book lovers are picky bastards. I was going to say "Book lovers can be hard to shop for," but the unspoken clause that follows that sentiment is "because they're picky bastards," so let's put our cards on the table.

There are some god-bloody-awful tchotchkes for bibliophiles out there. Don't let yourself, or a loved one, become another holiday victim of bad taste. Let the Official Second Annual 50 Books Holiday Gift Guide hold your hand through this tortuous process labour of love. Our team of dedicated shoppers has scoured the web, and in our collective wisdom, here are your top 10 choices.

1. An actual hand-selected book
HAHAHAhahahaha. Let's give ourselves a moment to get over our laughter at that idea. I my very own self am terrified at the prospect of walking into a bookstore and, without any external assistance, selecting a book for the hardcore readers in my life. Chances are, anything I'll pick out will be (a) wrong, or (b) already read. You're on your own here, friend.

Well, if you MUST, I can maybe throw you a bone or two. Since a disproportionate number of book nerds also tend to be food nerds, let me suggest The Book Lover's Cookbook, a collection of recipes culled from books as varied as Little Women and The Importance of Being Earnest and presented, along with the passages that inspired them, for your delectation by chefs (and book lovers) Janet Jensen and Shaunda Kennedy Wenger. And while I can't claim to speak for the craft nerd in your life, I know that I'VE certainly been coveting Craftivity, the new book put out by the inspiring folks over at one of my favourite craft sites, SuperNaturale. Why do I need this book so badly? Let me point you toward Exhibit A, the pompom rug pictured here.

2. Wish list
But really, you should just tell your loved ones to get off their sorry asses and create an
Amazon/Chapters/Barnes & Noble/Powell's wishlist already. Really now, what's their excuse? There's absolutely nothing wrong with having a wishlist available for people to consult. There IS something wrong with doing an unsolicited mailout of your wishlist's URL to every single person you know, but if your wishlist is just sitting there meekly waiting for thoughtful family and friends to find it, there's no breach of etiquette here. (And it's not too late! If you pester them today and they get a wishlist up by tomorrow, your order could still get to them by Christmas.)

[Updated to add Powell's to the list. Thanks for the reminder, reasonably prudent poet. I knew I was forgetting someone!]

3. Gift certificates
Some people hate gift certificates, I know. They find them anonymous and cold. I beg to disagree. A well-selected gift cert is a thoughtful gesture. Giving the gift of book shopping to a book lover is a wonderful thing. Giving the gift of shopping at, say, Home Depot to a book lover -- now THAT'S anonymous and cold.

4. Used book of the month club
I recommend this idea with caution. It's probably best bestowed on someone you know extremely well, someone who loves used books, someone who knows you're being different and not cheap, and someone who can appreciate this gift for the cool, quirky idea that it is. What is it? It's the Lorem Ipsum Used Book Club. In the site's own words, here's how it works:

The concept is simple: we select a book for you (based on your suggestions) and send it to the address you choose once every month. Give us an idea the kinds of books you're interested in, and our staff will pick out a book that we think you'll like. The books are yours to keep or better yet to give to your friends when you're done with them.

[via Metafilter]

5. Give a book to someone who might not otherwise get one
At this time of year, there are a gazillion opportunities to donate to children and other communities in need of books. If you're looking for some place to focus your generosity, might I suggest Chasity at I Feel Pithy and her ongoing book drive for the Oasis Youth Shelter? The drive has been going on for a few months now, and I recently asked Chasity for an update.

Chasity has personally shipped over 300 books she's collected, with more to go as soon as she can wrangle the shipping costs. Several dozen books have been sent directly to the shelter from their Amazon wishlist, which is probably the best course of action to take if you're able to send new books. If you want to pass along used books that you're ready to say good-bye to, you can, of course, mail them to the shelter. All the info you'll need is here in my original post on the subject. The shelter isn't even close to running out of room to house books, so let's keep 'em coming into the new year, too.

6. Smartass t-shirts
I like to use fashion to warn people that yes, in fact, I am a total dork. In my respectably sized collection of hipster tees, I have everything from an awesome "Reading is sexy" shirt to an almost equally awesome tee whose graphic makes a joke about Scrabble that would take me too long to describe here. The noble and venerable internet establishment of Glarkware has always kept me well supplied with a steady stream of ironic tees that do my shrivelled Gen X soul good. My Obey the Rules, Dude shirt is possibly one of my all-time favourites, and now it can be yours for the low, low sale price of ten smackeroos. The Good Grammar Costs Nothing tee is, quite obviously, another must-have.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention that the good people at Threadless are on the very last day of their holiday sale. All shirts in stock are going for a mere ten bucks each. Some of my favourite designs are Para Poppins and They're, Their, There (which especially cracks my shit up; if it makes you laugh, too, you probably need to get it).

ETA: This Books Rule tee is also awesome, especially if you love hamsters. [Thanks for the tip, Melbell237!]

7. Snazzy notebooks
If you like to read, it stands to reason that you probably like to write, even if only to compulsively make lists. Why not write your lists in the very best notebooks the world has to offer? I'm talking about Moleskines, of course, which has been supplying high-quality journals to pretentious people like you and me for more than two centuries. I reckon they're pretty good at it by now.

8. Library prints
Printed on heavy-grade paper, these 16x12 prints of famous Renaissance libraries are gorgeous AND affordable. You can buy all six as a set, or purchase them individually for a mere USD$8.99 each. Nicely matted and framed, one of these would make a lovely piece of book porn for someone's wall.

9. Pretty baubles
I dig the I Read Banned Books bracelet. It features the covers of six banned books, from To Kill a Mockingbird to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. More arty and less political is the What Lies Within Us bracelet, a brushed silver bangle with an engraved quote from Emerson.

[Ups to Jagosaurus the wonder lizard for the link!]

10. Useless tchotchkes
Okay, maybe there's room for a tchotchke or five on this list after all. But come on, how many opportunities does life afford you to enact scenes in which Charles Dickens makes out with Leo Tolstoy while Virginia Woolf watches? Thanks to the Great Writers Finger Puppets, your dirty literary fantasies can finally come true. (Added bonus: This site also lets you search for a novelty gift by author, with choices ranging from Dorothy Parker to Socrates.)

Perhaps you know a book lover so hardcore that they took the time and trouble to become one of those underpaid, underappreciated stewards of books whom we commonly refer to as "librarians." Or perhaps you just need to find out exactly how "amazing push-button shushing action" works. Either way, you win with the librarian action figure.

That's all from me. Do you know of any must-have gifts for fellow bookies? Fire off a note in the comments section.

BOOKS: Introduction to Great Books

I just spent the last four hours wrapping Christmas presents, and man oh man, my back hurts. Also, if my family and friends had any idea how frequently my feet are employed in controlling wayward wrapping paper, they'd probably be a lot less eager to attack their gifts. So let's keep that between you and me.

While I was engaged thusly, I was wondering something:

Say you met someone who'd never read any of the "great" books, but this person expressed to you a keen interest in exploring the classics. Bear in mind that this person is intelligent and literate; they just also happen to be innocent in the ways of fine literature. You'd want your suggestions to be accessible and engaging and, of course, great. What would you recommend? What wouldn't you recommend? Why?

BOOKS: The Mama of All Reckonings

Ahhh. It was nice to be gone. It's even nicer to be back.

This was our first honest-to-god vacation in almost a year and a half, and it was worth the wait. Admittedly, we were only away for four days, but that's okay. I get BORED with understatedly luxurious five-star hotels. Also? Panoramic clifftop views of storm-ravaged seas? Ho-hum. And don't even get me started on the subject of magical fog-shrouded sunsets.*

Given the fact that the tub in our house is in a cramped, dark alcove, and given that our bathroom is lit with a godawful strip of flourescent tube lighting that would surely make Thomas Edison regret his Great Light Bulb Project of '79 (don't judge me; we rent), it's easy to understand how I could've forgotten how much I love reading in the bath. Of the many highlights of our trip, spending an hour at a time reading in our massive ocean-view soaker tub might just top the list.

(Excuse me. I have to go sob in a corner for a while after writing that last paragraph. And did I tell you about the food? The only thing more awesome than the giant bathtub was the magnificent cuisine served in the restaurant attached to the hotel: award-winning fare that was, through the magic of room service -- a service that surely was designed especially for parents of, er, "spirited" toddlers who are unfit for the interiors of fine dining establishments -- delivered TO OUR ROOM. Let me tell you something, friends, and that something is this: there are few experiences in this life finer than playing a lightning round of rock-paper-scissors with your partner to see who has to jump out of the tub, race into a comically fluffy hotel robe, and then sign the room-service chit for your dinner of free-range grilled Cowichan Bay chicken breast and coq au vin with garlic mashed potatoes, AND WINNING.)

When I started to write that last paragraph, I had a segue in mind for moving along to the next part of this post. I've since forgotten it. So let's call this a segue, shall we? Move it along, people. Nothing to see here.

I've got a lot of catching up to do with my book tally for the year. Again. On the plus side, I really like -- and in some cases love -- all the books I'm about to mention, so maybe you'll get some holiday gift-giving ideas here. So if you're procrastinating doing something else by reading this post, don't feel guilty -- you're doing research. Because that's the kind of good person you are.

The Four-Story Mistake
by Elizabeth Enright (#39)
I've written about my vast fondness for Elizabeth Enright's books for older kids, but it bears repeating. I am vastly fond of Elizabeth Enright's books for older kids. Despite the fact that her stories take place in the 1940s, there's something so accessible about the way Enright writes that it makes them almost timeless. Her characters are precocious, but never irritating. They love adventures and they have good senses of humour. In short, they're likeable kids doing things that kids like to do. In the case of The Four-Story Mistake, these things include: learning to ride bikes, building treehouses, and putting on shows for each other.

None of this sounds like much, but then why is it that when I'm reading one of Enright's books, I find myself never wanting it to end? I can't say that about a lot of adult books I've read, that's for sure.

On Beauty
by Zadie Smith (#40)
Why didn't someone TELL me that On Beauty is loosely based on Howard's End? I would've picked it up a lot sooner, I can tell you that. This is one of those books I thought I had totally pegged up front, solely based on its title (treacly) and on its author's name (romance novel-y). Unsurprisingly, my science was not tight.

Smith does a phenomenal job of reinventing the basic plot and character tenets of Howard's End within a modern setting (an ivy-league American university, to be specific), without being overly invested in these tenets. While Howard's End is about class differences and struggles, On Beauty also adds the complexity of gender, race, and politics.

Now, I do have to confess that books like this tend to make me anxious. As soon as I realize that I'm reading a book that's loosely (or not so loosely) based on a book I consider a favourite, I get all caught up in looking for the parallels and fretting over the divergences, and it's easy to literally lose the plot, or to turn my reading experience into a hollow academic exercise. Fortunately, Smith is an astonishingly good storyteller -- given that this is only, what, her third novel? -- and I was mostly able to set aside my weird OCD reading habits. Mostly.

Tender Is the Night
by F. Scott Fitzgerald (#41)
It's hard when you like a book so much that you fear fucking up other people's perception of it with your clumsy words. This is how I feel about Tender Is the Night, which is, if not my all-time favourite book, definitely on my top five list. It's not a perfect novel, by any stretch. The narrative is on the messy side, but the more I read this book, the more I realize that you need a bit of looseness (all right: sloppiness) to make room for the many breathtaking psychological insights Fitzgerald tosses away in single sentences, so casually that you could miss them if you weren't paying attention.

I've lost count of how often I've read this novel, but at a conservative guess I'd say probably eight or nine times. When I first read it, I was several years younger than the main characters, a wealthy (of course) couple named Nicole and Dick Diver. Now I'm several years older than Nicole and almost the same age as Dick, and knowing this does something to me. Something good, mostly... if you consider deep thoughts about mortality and wasted potential and failed relationships "good."

Promise me you'll read this book someday. It doesn't have to be now, and it doesn't even have to be next year. But some time when you're feeling soft and forgiving and gentle toward your fellow creatures -- or perhaps when you're feeling just the opposite -- give it a try. (Now that you've promised, you can't take it back. I'll find you.)

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
by Bill Bryson (#42)
I'm a big fan of Bill Bryson's writing. I've read almost everything he's written, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he sometimes lacks the ability to know when he's gone on too long. This tendency, however, is nowhere in evidence in The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, a childhood memoir as tight and captivating and charming as anything you'll ever read -- and possibly my new favourite Bryson book.

Bryson grew up in the 1950s in Des Moines, Iowa, because, as he says, "somebody had to." He tells a series of hilarious (and only slightly hyperbolic) stories about his escapades as a child and pre-teen, but just as interesting is how he uses these stories as a jumping-off point to talk about the '50s themselves, and how this decade shaped the largest population boom the western world has seen.

Those of us born after 1970 take for granted the richly textured way in which our writerly peers have remembered and recalled so much of the ephemeral pop-culture flotsam (and also jetsom) of our childhood and teenage years. Douglas Coupland has made an entire career out of it. But does this level of comic, self-deprecating navel-gazing exist for previous generations? I dunno. Give this book to your parents and ask them. Let me know what they say.

The Friends of Meager Fortune
by David Adams Richards (#43)
David Adams Richards has been called Canada's finest living writer. He's been called a national treasure. He's even been compared to Shakespeare, and I believe it was a reputable critic who did the latter, and not Richards's mom.

I'm not so sure that I'm ready to dethrone Margaret Atwood, but I liked this book a fair bit, and I'll 'fess up that I got so caught up in the plot that I pretty much chewed off the tips of my fingers. The Friends of Meager Fortune is a semi-historical novel that takes place in the villages and logging camps of the Miramichi region in New Brunswick. It's written in a terse, severe way -- which isn't usually my thing, but it works in this novel -- that hearkens to Richards's self-professed literary idols: Tolstoy, Hardy, Dostoyevsky.

So consider this review your Amazon relational database. "Customers who liked this book also liked Dickens and Eliot!"

The Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, The New Treasure Seekers
by E. Nesbit (#44-46)
Argh. I'm tired! The ol' CTS is troubling my poor beleagured tendons. Suffice to say that if you like kids' books and you haven't read anything by E. Nesbit, you've been missing out on the godmother of contemporary children's storytelling. It's not too late for you, though! Hie thee to a library or bookstore. Thank me later.

*The previous 33 words are all lies.

ETC: And How Was Your Weekend?

Whoops. I guess I forgot to mention that we here at Casa Doppelganger were temporarily decamping for some much-needed R&R. I'm back and filled with a gazillion bookish post ideas... which will have to wait for now. I've got bags to unpack and laundry to do, as well as a trio of extremely needy pets who, despite the fact that they've been well cared for in our absence, would have us believe that they are inches away from needing their own telethon. Won't somebody think of the animals?

BOOKS: Bye-Bye, Mon Cowboy

You can't read any amount of children's literature without having your suspension of disbelief tested waaaaaay beyond the bounds of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. Beautiful virgins ascending to the heavens? I'll see you your virgin and raise you a giant red dog, a talking train, and a man with an improbably large hat who keeps a wild monkey in a city apartment without a permit.

I accept all these things, because that's how I roll, but I do find myself having my moments with Richard Scarry, particularly in his Best Word Book Ever. I can handle elephants in sailor suits and pigs driving fire engines. This I'm used to. But if you examine the detail-packed Where's Waldo-esque illustrations in this book, more troubling questions emerge:

• On the bears' farm, why is it that species which, in previous pages, wore clothes and seemed sentient are suddenly naked and contained in pigpens and such? Why do the farming bears all have a look of human-like consciousness on their faces, while the pigs, sheep, and cows all have disturbingly blank expressions that one can only describe as "a state of pre-food-ness"?
• At the supermarket, do the pig customers, who have mysteriously regained their sentience, realize that the store is hawking bacon over in the meats department? Shouldn't a boycott be in order? What's equally alarming is that someone has parked a shopping cart right in front of the meat case, and sitting in the kiddie seat is a piglet who is happily gazing at the bologna. The fact that this porcine infant also seems to have been abandoned by his parents is almost incidental to the scene.
• The zoo is possibly the most disorienting tableau. We see caged bears and elephants and beasts of prey, while the zoo's clientele seems to be exclusively rodent in nature. The zookeepers and other staff are all cats, who attend equally to the mice visitors and wild animals. I don't know why this scene troubles me, but it does. Deeply.

This is what happens when you're forced to read the same books over and over (and over and over, with no end in sight). I was relieved when Rusty -- who has his own issues with the Best Word Book Ever -- sent me this link, as evidence that not only are we not the only parents with a tendency to overly scrutinize our child's books, we're also not the only parents to fixate on this particular book. It's a Flickr photoset created by a member called kokogiak:

Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever, 1963 vs 1991 editions (with revisions). The 1963 edition is my own, bought for me in the late '60s when I was a toddler, and read to tatters. The 1991 edition belongs to my kids today. I was so familar with the older one that I immediately started noticing a few differences, and so have catalogued 14 of the more interesting differences here in this collection.

The changes are pretty much on par with what you'd expect. Mom and dad bunny are both in the kitchen now, not just mom. Chanukah has been added to the section on holidays. And the First Nations rabbit no longer paddles his canoe, having been replaced by a garden-variety Rabbit rabbit.

I was a little sad, though, to see that becoming a cowboy is no longer considered a viable career option:

Curse you, "progress."

BOOKS: Hot for Books

Why have I not known about the if:book blog until today? I can handle the fact that I haven't heard of many of the titles on all the year-end "best of" lists that are coming out right now -- I'm busy, I'm too cheap to buy new releases, whatever. But overlooking this website, well, that's just plain sloppy.

if:book is to publishing as We Make Money Not Art is to, uh, art. It examines the intersection between books and technology, exploring the future of books: how they're published, how they're distributed, how they're read. Recent posts cover things such as the new open-source e-book reader dotReader, the book search interface of Google's book viewer, and defining a concept I've never heard of before: the networked book. Each of these ideas is post-worthy on its own, but today I want to draw your attention to a set of essays on Forbes.com -- all centred around the idea of the future of the book -- that if:book recently linked to.

From Forbes' introduction to the essays:

Are books in danger?

The conventional wisdom would say yes. After all, more and more media--the Internet, cable television, satellite radio, videogames--compete for our time. And the Web in particular, with its emphasis on textual snippets, skimming and collaborative creation, seems ill-suited to nurture the sustained, authoritative transmission of complex ideas that has been the historical purview of the printed page.

But surprise--the conventional wisdom is wrong. Our special report on books and the future of publishing is brim-full of reasons to be optimistic. People are reading more, not less. The Internet is fueling literacy. Giving books away online increases off-line readership. New forms of expression--wikis, networked books--are blossoming in a digital hothouse.

People still burn books. But that only means that books are still dangerous enough to destroy. And if people want to destroy them, they are valuable enough that they will endure.

If that doesn't get you hot for books, I don't know what can. W.B. Yeats reading "The Second Coming"? W.B. Yeats reading "The Second Coming" while wearing a Speedo? Tell me. Help me help you.

Among other things, this collection contains essays about how McSweeney's founder Dave Eggers built his "multimedia publishing empire" without any advertising, about why boingboing editor Cory Doctorow lets people download his books for free, and about how people are earning thousands of dollars simply by reviewing books on Amazon. (Er, hi! Where do I sign up?)

There's a LOT to dig into here. You'll know where to find me for the rest of the day. Send for my things.

BOOKS: What? A List? Well, If You Must...

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It's enough to make you wish 2007 would just get here already. Another year-end "best of" list, this one from The New York Times:

The 10 Best Books of 2006

There are couple of pluses to this list I must point out. First, you have to admire the editors' restraint in keeping their list down to a mere ten titles. And second, I've never heard of Amy Hempel, but the description of her short stories has my interest decidedly piqued.

I'm bagged, peepz. All this water boiling and snow shovelling has taken its toll on my fragile west-coast constitution. Off for a weekend of R&R, and I'll be back in full force on Monday. TGIFrigginF.