Patrick Leigh Fermor R.I.P.

José Saramago R.I.P.

Howard Zinn R.I.P.

J. D. Salinger R.I.P.

The Weird Book Room

I recently received an invitation from Abebooks to check out their Weird Book Room. It's a pretty fantastic collection of literary oddities, some of my favourites being:

-The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories
-Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them
-Cheese Problems Solved
-The Thermodynamics of Pizza
-Nuclear War: What's in It for You?

And on and on they go. It's worth checking out.

Paddling to the Sea or Jogging the Memory

I was listening to Eleanor Wachtel interview Michael Ignatieff on Writers and Company yesterday, when he mentioned a children's book, called Paddle to the Sea (by Holling C. Holling), about a boy who carves a toy Indian in a canoe that makes its way from Lake Nipigon, through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and all the way out the St. Lawrence Seaway. Immediately I had this image in my head of a small wooden canoe going over the Falls. I did a bit of research and found this:



I have no idea when I actually saw this, though I suspect it was in elementary school at some time or other. You can watch the film in its entirety, thanks to the NFB's fantastic website, here.

Dystopian Literature

I have always liked reading dystopian literature. Perhaps that is because it agrees with my generally pessimistic view of civilisation and where it is headed. Anyhow, having reread Brave New World earlier this year, and having just finished rereading Zamyatin's We, I have decided to complete what has always been for me the triumvirate of dystopian literature and reread 1984.

Does anyone have any other suggestions of good dystopian literature of which I may be unaware?

J. G. Ballard R.I.P.

The Ball is Round!

Today, I finally finished reading David Goldblatt's excellent book The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football. At 907 pages, no small feat. Though not my favourite football book, that honour is shared amongst Eduardo Galeano's Soccer in Sun and Shadow and Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, this book is, as I said, excellent. Massive in scope, it is exactly what the title says, a history of the game on a world scale. But more than covering the spread and development of football, it gives the social and historical context in which football was and is played. The strongest chapters are the later ones, I'm guessing because there are more records available. These chapters detail the corruption and commercialization endemic in the world game. However, he ends with this:

Living with profound risk and uncertainty is now the destiny of humanity. We are lucky then that the game we have chosen as our collective metaphor, the avatar of our social dilemmas, should so closely parallel our predicament. To place the world under the sign of play is to expose ourselves to the caprice of the ball. We must be bold enough to think that we have the guile, the heart and the wit to bring it under control.

An over-intellectualisation perhaps, something I may have been guilty of once or twice, but apt nonetheless. All in all, an excellent, thoroughly researched work, and a worthwhile read.*


*When the hell did I become a book reviewer?

World Book Day!

Today is World Book Day. Actually, let me clarify that. Today is World Book Day if you're in Ireland and the United Kingdom. If you're anywhere else in the world, then World Book Day is on 23 April. Actually, 23 April is World Book and Copyright Day. It's also Canada Book Day. Get all that? Me neither, really. No matter though. Just turn off your computer and go read a book.

The Ball is Round

I'm currently reading David Goldblatt's thus far excellent The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football.* In the section about the game's spread to South America there is this report from a Brazilian journalist watching one of the first organized games in Rio de Janeiro:

"In Bom Retiro, a group of Englishmen, a bunch of maniacs as they all are, get together, from time to time, to kick around something that looks like a bull's bladder. It gives them great satisfaction or fills them with sorrow when this kind of yellowish bladder enters a rectangle formed by wooden posts."

Not really too far off, was he?


*In North America it's published as The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer. That said, the publishers did not change the text to read soccer in lieu of football each time.

Writer's Rooms

I came across a great ongoing feature today on the Guardian website. It's called Writer's Rooms. Basically, it's a photograph of the room and a description of that room, usually by the author in questions, assuming they're still amongst the living. I haven't looked at them all and so haven't chosen a favourite yet, but as someone who loves books and as someone who wishes he wrote more and wishes he made more time to write, I enjoy the glimpses into writer's spaces.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn R.I.P.

George Orwell is starting a blog!

Wait a minute, you're asking yourself, isn't Orwell dead? (At least I'm guessing that's what you're asking yourself...that's what I'd be asking myself...how am I supposed to know what you're asking yourselves? You expect too much of me.) But I digress...

The Orwell Prize is going to be publishing George Orwell's diaries, in blog form, starting August 9th. Originally written 9 August 1938 and continuing on until 1942, each diary entry will be published 70 years to the date after it was written.

For a long time I considered him to be my favourite writer (I still count Homage to Catalonia as one of my favourite books) so I for one am very excited to have this glimpse into his life and thoughts.

The blog can be read here.

Art Garfunkel's Library

I first came across Art Garfunkel's library in an article on the Guardian website. Art Garfunkel has kept track of every book he has read since June of 1968 and now one can, should one wish to, read through that list. He began way back when with Rousseau's Confessions and one thousand two hundred and twenty-two books later, sometime in 2007 (Is that the most recent update or has Art stopped reading? (Is Art even still alive? Editor's note: Yes, Art is still alive)) he read The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington. Alternately, you can save yourself the trouble (and lose out on the joy) of the entire list and just take a look at his favourites.

Browsing through his list, combined with my love of lists, inspired me to do the same thing. Sometime in the late nineties I started keeping track of the books I read by recording them in my journals, along with any remarkable, thought provoking or interesting quotations. And even before I started doing this regularly I sometimes made mention of the books I was reading. So I was able to dig through these old journals, starting in January of 1995, and compile a list of 331 books I have read, though technically it is only 327 as four of them I repeated. (There are other books I have reread but they usually didn't make it into my journal, so there is no record of them.) My first book on the list is Gösta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlöf and just yesterday I finished reading Netherland by Joseph O'Neill. I really enjoyed the slow process of digging through old journals and finding the books I'd read, but it's also interesting now to be able to just look through my list and see what trends there are, what subjects captured my interest or what writer's I was taken with at any given time.

And maybe one day, if I'm bored or curious, I'll cross reference my list with Art's and see which books we have both read.

And should anyone care, I'm averaging about 26.48 books a year versus Art's 25.89.

But it's not a race.

Yes I Said Yes I Will Yes!

Last year when I finished reading War & Peace, I said I wasn't sure which would be next on my reading list: Ulysses or The History of Western Philosophy. Apparently neither were. At the beginning of this year when listing my resolutions I also mentioned those two books. And while I'm making very slow work of the latter (I'm at Plato) I have now completed the former. I took it with me on my trip to Ireland (a bit of light vacation reading anyone?) to force myself to read it, plus I'm the kind of pretentious sort that would read Ulysses while traveling in Ireland. I would also read the Odyssey while Greek island hopping, in case you were wondering. And while I didn't finish the book on my trip I did get two thirds of the way through it and have now, just over an hour ago, finished it. Apparently James Joyce said that it took him ten years to write it so it should take people ten years to read it. And while I had no intention of spending ten years on it, I can see why one might need the time. It is a masterfully crafted book, full of references, at times captivating, at times confusing, at times witty, at times, umm, confusing. Some episodes of it captured me, others left me wondering what exactly was going on. But for all that, I think it was worth the effort. I didn't necessarily understand all of it, but I'm not sure I needed to. At those times it was enough to enjoy the writing, the play with language etc. And while I have no intention of rereading it just yet, I may feel the need to do so someday. At the James Joyce Institute in Dublin they had a great little post card that summarized Ulysses in 36 words. And while I didn't buy it and so am unable to post that here for you, here is the BBC's Cheat's Guide to Ulysses complete with plenty of amusing readers comments. Next up? Finnegan's Wake. Or not.