The Buzz...About Books

Still Bleeding Blue

Toronto hockey fans -- this is for you.

If you're still reeling from the devastating loss that was Game 7 on Monday night, know that you're not alone. Many Leafs fans across the city are still in shock, and even the bandwagon fans knew a tragedy when they saw one. The sheer volume of jaws dropping when Boston made that final goal in overtime...I'd never seen so many hearts break in an instant.

So, here's a moment for our beloved Leafs - and even more - here's a moment for the die-hard fans that love them.

Check out some titles that look into the minds of sports fans, how sports became such a huge part of Canadian culture and more.

    

 

 

And, remember...there's always next year!
 

Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir by Amanda Knox

Waiting to be Heard: a Memoir by Amanda Knox promises to tell her side of a particularly brutal story.

Knox, an American student living in Italy, was sentenced to 26 years for the 2007 murder and sexual assualt of her British roomate, Meredith Kercher. Knox's boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted for his role in this gruesome murder.

In 2011, the convictions were overturned on appeal and both were released.  In March 2013, these acquittals were reversed and a retrial ordered.

Sensational media coverage with reports of satanic rites, sex, drugs, police brutality, false allegations, conspiracies, and cover-ups makes it difficult to tell fact from fiction. 

Here is a timeline of the main events. 

One thing is clear: people just love to hate Amanda Knox. Social media and online communities are fixated on the 25-year old woman now living in Seattle. 

Her supporters claim she is a victim of a sexist and corrupt judicial system. Her haters (and there are many) claim she is simply a pretty little liar - a psychopath who might get away with murder.  

Here's some recent coverage of her book: Toronto Star, Globe, New Yorker, CBC, Telegraph, Guardian, and The New York Times.

Watch an excerpt from Knox's first interview after her release from prison with Diane Sawyer. Full interview (warning-some graphic content): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. 

Listen to her Canadian interview on the CBC. 

 

Meredith Kercher, Age 19 in England

 

The Kercher family responds to the release of Knox's book and her impending retrial. Meredith's father, John Kercher, is a journalist and has released a book in the UK about his daughter (to date, it's not available in Canada).

 Further reading available at the Toronto Public Library:

Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: Reading to Help Your Nothing Day

The Mary Tyler Moore Show almost didn't make it after all.  Jennifer Armstrong's Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted reveals that early audiences gave it a chilly reception. 36 years later, The Mary Tyler Moore Show is cited as setting the bar for television comedy and for women's roles on TV. Without Mary Richards, there would be no Liz Lemon. Throw your hat in the ring - reserve your copy today to get the scoop on the writers, the cast dynamics, Veal Prince Orloff and Chuckles the Clown. 

Armstrong speaks about her book. Read her interview. Advance reviews are glowing: Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly love it. Recall some fave characters here. According to the Huffington Post, the female cast members will reunite on an upcoming Hot in Cleveland episode - made bittersweet with Valerie Harper's recent announcement about her illness.

 

Further reading from MTM alumnae:

Oprah is a serious MTM fan. Watch this:

Mimzi, the MTM kitty......

Calling All Angels: Heavenly Creatures in Recent Fiction

Angel fiction is all the rage. Fans of Danielle Trussoni's best-selling Angelology, a tale of secret societies, ancient libraries, and fallen angels, eagerly await the upcoming release of Angelopolis. If you like books by Dan Brown, you must check this series out. Even more exciting, Will Smith has signed on to produce the film adaptation. Paul Bettany in Legion (above) is one of the many heavenly bodies to grace the big screen. The super-hot Mortal Instruments series is due to hit theatres in August.

Recent titles featuring angels (and a few hot demons) range from steamy romance (J.R. Ward), to mystery (Linda Poitven), to dark urban fantasy (Tad Williams, Nalini Singh). This sub-genre is a celestial mash-up of religious sources, literary traditions, and pure invention. Fallen angels make for less than angelic behaviour - which is part of the attraction. Angel fiction by Laini Taylor, Lauren Kate, Michelle Rowan, and Becca Fitzpatrick appeal to both teen and adult readers. In fact, Lauren Kate's fallen angel, Daniel Grigori, is arguably even more sparkly than Edward Cullen. Some angels are just working stiffs: Stephanie Chong's guardian angel, Serena St. Clair, has a day job as a yoga instructor. Simon Rich's What in God's Name? takes this to the next level: God is a cranky CEO who wants to liquidate his assets  - but not before he challenges two underpaid angels to save the Earth.

Read on:

Check out these seraphic graphics - fallen angels have long been a fixture in graphic fiction:           

Ben Foster's role as the mutant, Angel, in X-Men 3: The Last Stand is oft cited as a positive LGBT symbol.  

This Earth Day, why not adopt a four-pronged approach to saving the planet?

For more than 40 years, Earth Day, celebrated on April 22, has been inspiring people to protect the environment. Quickly -- off the top of your head, what is the single most important thing you can do to lessen your impact on the earth? Recycle your newspapers? Drive a hybrid car or take public transit? All these actions really do help but nothing helps more than reducing or eliminating your consumption of meat (having fewer children helps too but this isn’t something you can easily employ retroactively!).

Numerous scientific investigations including a recent United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) study advocate eating less meat in order to avoid further environmental damage, because current farming practices are destroying the natural world.  Another UN study, Livestock’s Long Shadow, reports that the livestock sector is one of the top contributors to the most serious environmental damage, both locally and globally.

Animal farming is related to land degradation, climate change, air and water pollution, water shortages and loss of biodiversity. Pollution from fertilizers threatens human health and the environment by causing toxic algal blooms –- and 80 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizers is consumed indirectly by livestock. Did you know it takes 420 gallons of water to produce one pound of grain-fed chicken?  And the amount of manure produced by factory farms is three times greater than the amount produced by humans? According to the United Nations, “A substantial reduction of impacts [from agriculture] would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change away from animal products.”

Per-capita meat consumption has more than doubled in the past 50 years and global population continues to increase. The overall demand for meat has increased five-fold, putting increasing pressure on the availability of water, land, feed, fertilizer, fuel and waste disposal capacity. The Worldwatch Institute posits that meat consumption is a driving force behind deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities and the spread of disease. Switching to a vegan diet can cut 90 percent of the total emissions your eating habits contribute to global warming, while, according to data from Carnegie Mellon University, switching to all-local foods will only reduce emissions by four percent! Read more in Worldwatch Institute’ s ejournal available free with your library card.

Reducing your meat consumption is soooo easy now –- start with Forks Over Knives (also available in DVD and ebook) and the Forks Over Knives cookbook. A vegetarian diet will also help you lose weight, lower your cholesterol and prevent (or even reverse) chronic conditions such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes and help you look hot. The right food not only helps the planet but is your best medicine.

 

       

Avoiding meat also means avoiding the consumption of fecal material as almost 90 percent of all store-bought meat shows contact with Enterococcus faecium –- a bacteria in fecal matter. As strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria become more commonplace because of their use in factory farming, the less we are able to use the drugs to treat human disease.
 

Need some support? Join Toronto Vegetarian Association for nutritional information, podcasts, menu ideas and restaurant advice; www.GreenYourDiet.org is another great resource. Check out all the amazing veg blogs out there and sign up to receive regular emails so you always have new recipe ideas for inspiration. Take part in rabble.ca’s Vegan Challenge because a vegan diet has even less of an environmental impact (a 2009 study by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency reported that transitioning to a vegan diet would mitigate climate change costs by around 80 percent whereas just eliminating meat reduces costs by around 70 percent). To quote one rabble blogger, “It sounds overwhelming. It sounds impossible. But so does ending gender-based violence or eliminating institutional racism... We can tackle the Vegan Challenge the same way we do global injustice, by starting with small daily actions.”

Food choices matters. Every time we sit down to eat, each of us can help create a greener, kinder and healthier world simply by leaving animals off our plates.

A Quick Read With Charlie D

Looking for a fast, enjoyable read? Don't have time for the new trend of 800 page books? The Rapid Reads series might just be what you are looking for. These books are usually no longer than 100 pages. Stories include anything from mysteries, gang life to romance. If you prefer to read non-fiction, there are also books on a variety of subjects including the World Wars, finance and global warming.

Through this series, I discovered Gail Bowen's interesting character, Charlie D, who hosts a late-night radio program. His listeners are very involved in the call-in portion of the show and his regular callers tend to be outcasts, who feel deeply connected to Charlie. But Charlie also hears from listeners whose personal relationships with him go too far and can result in murder.

   

Love You to Death
Charlie discovers that his callers are being killed on by one. The police suspect that one of Charlie's fans is obsessed and are now depending on Charlie to bring the killer out of hiding before another murder occurs. Also available in eBook.

One Fine Day You're Gonna Die
An expert on death and dying is a guest on Charlie D's radio show. Things take a very dark turn when a caller threatens to kill himself, as well as the daughter of Charlie's guest. Also available in eBook.

The Shadow Killer
It's Father's Day and Charlie D is wrestling with memories of his estranged father, when a young caller shares his plan to murder his own father and the rest of his family. Can Charlie find the location of the caller? Time is running out, and surprisingly Charlie's father may be able to help.

To learn more about Rapid Reads visit their website.

Putting on the Fitz: Books about F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald ruled the Jazz Age. Rich, talented, beautiful, and outrageous - Scott and Zelda partied like it was 1925.  Both continue to fascinate the public and inspire novelists, filmmakers and artists. Director Baz Luhrmann's upcoming The Great Gatsby and the recently published Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Fowler will renew interest in this beautiful but damned couple.

Fun fact: video game designer Shigeru Miyamo named his pixel princess "Zelda" after Zelda Fitzgerald.

Scott, one of the greatest modern writers, wrote The Great Gatsby.  Zelda was a glamorous southern belle who smoked, drank, played with boys - and got away with it. 

Together they ruled as the celebrity couple of the 1920s, the king and queen of the Lost Generation with Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker, Jon Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and Isadora Duncan.

But it wasn't all golden. Zelda was Scott's muse - but she was also a rival and struggled with her artistic ambitions. Hemingway viewed her as Scott's Yoko Ono; Zelda thought Hemingway was a jerk. Alcoholism and mental illness were the dark passengers that dogged their so-called charmed life. Scott died at 44 from a heart attack; Zelda died in a fire at a mental institution.

 Rare glimpes of the Fitzgeralds:

Fictionalized works with the Fitzgeralds:

  The Beautiful and the Damned

What Kept Toronto Reading

This year's One Book celebrates the power of the book: its power to evoke emotion, to band people together, and ultimately, to bring about change for the future.

In honour of 2013's Keep Toronto Reading festival, let's revisit the past One Book selections and check out what kept Toronto reading in the last five years:

 

In 2012, Maggie Helwig's Girls Fall Down set the tone for readers in Toronto. Based in various parts of the city, marked by distinct Toronto hangouts, it explored themes of mental health, homelessness, belonging and the ways our bodies betray us. Helwig penned a solid novel that spurred discussions between many Torontonians.

 

 

In 2011, Judy Fong Bates introduced us to a family full of secrets in Midnight at the Dragon Cafe. In spare, intimate prose, Bates drew out the weight of culture and tradition, and the portrait of a young Chinese-Canadian girl growing up in a small Ontario town.

 

 

 

In 2010, More by Austin Clarke dove headfirst into issues of racial inequity and the experiences of a black immigrant woman in Toronto, 25 years in. Both personal and political, More examined the complexities of race in modern western culture.

 

 

 

In 2009, Glen Downie's Loyalty Management brought readers together with a collection of poems that looked at the many sides of living in this city - from the lighthearted and funny to the deeply sobering. Downie's memorable voice, unique spacing and lovely made up words ("sleepward"!) pulled together a collection suitable for those new to poetry and long-time lovers alike.

 

 

2008 kicked off the One Book festival with Michael Redhill's Consolation. This title slipped between two worlds - centuries apart - that captured the memory of a young Toronto, through photographs and lived experiences.

 

 

Many of our One Book selections had Toronto as a starting point, but you can see how much the idea of what Toronto is - and who Toronto is - can change over time.

In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag asks: "How long is it since you were really bothered?... About something important, about something real?" Whether poetry or prose, One Book titles are chosen for the issues they bring up and the conversations they can spark all across the city.

Here's to many more One Books to come - thanks for reading, Toronto!

Treating Ideas Like Cats

“Ray Bradbury, cat lover #RIP” was the tweet sent out last June 6 by Buzzfeed after Bradbury’s death at age 92. Not “Ray Bradbury, author extraordinaire #RIP,” or “Ray Bradbury, sci fi genius #RIP,” or even “Ray Bradbury, Author of Fahrenheit 451 #RIP” but “Ray Bradbury, cat lover #RIP.” Elsewhere, blogger Bobby Pfeiffer wrote an obit entitled “R.I.P. Ray Bradbury (and another proof that cats are a writer's best friend)”.  Bradbury, author of this year’s One Book selection Fahrenheit 451, was clearly well known for mentioning his cats fondly in numerous contexts. He had even suggested that he treated his creative ideas (and by extension, his writing) in the same manner as his cats.

Another commenter on an obituary blog post about Bradbury also noted his ongoing interest in cats. “My first encounter with Ray Bradbury was at a book signing for Quicker Than the Eye in 1996,” writes Dale Allen. “When it came my turn to get an autographed copy of the book, I asked him as he shook my hand, ‘What’s your cat’s name?’ referring to his publicity photo on the back of the book. Bradbury said, ‘What?’ The book clerk assisting him repeated my question. ‘Tigger!’ he exclaimed … ‘I told my publishers not to change it until they brought him back to life.’”

Bradbury and his wife Marguerite (Maggie) Bradbury (nee McClure) shared their home with several cats over the years. Like his cats, his wife of 56 years helped enable his writing as, for many years, Maggie was the family breadwinner, allowing Ray to stay home and write. At one point in the 1950s, the Bradbury family home was home to 22 felines, although more recent years saw more manageable numbers, dwindling to only two, Win-Win and Ditzy, at the time of Marguerite’s death in 2003.

In a splendid simile, Bradbury was quoted as treating his writing in the same manner as his cats:

“As soon as things get difficult, I walk away. That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you. If you try to approach a cat and pick it up, hell, it won’t let you do it. You’ve got to say, ‘Well, to hell with you.’ And the cat says, ‘Wait a minute. He’s not behaving the way most humans do.’ Then the cat follows you out of curiosity: ‘Well, what’s wrong with you that you don’t love me?” (Zen in the Art of Writing).

“Any owner of cats will know of what I speak. Cats come at dawn to sit on your bed. They may not nip your nose or inhale your breath or make a sound. They simply sit there and stare at you until you open one eyelid and spy them there about to drop dead for need of feeding. So it is with ideas. They come silently in the hour of trying to wake up and remember my name. The notions and fancies sit on the edge of my wits, whisper in my ears and then, if I don't rouse, give more than cats give: a good knock in the head, which gets me out and down to my typewriter before the ideas flee or die or both. In any event, I make the ideas come to me. I do not go to them. I provoke their patience by pretending disregard. This infuriates the latent creature until it is almost raving to be born and once born, nourished" (Columbia World of Quotations).

And also from Zen in the Art of Writing:

“And metaphors like cats behind your smile,
Each one wound up to purr,
each one a pride,
Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside (...)”

Cats are mentioned throughout Bradbury’s writing, including in the title of one of his books of short stories, The Cat’s Pajamas. Cats serve both as minor subjects of discussion and more often are used in descriptive similes and metaphors. Says one short story character, “There’s no future without my cat,” a concept probably familiar to Bradbury.  Bradbury also wrote a book of poetry called With Cat for Comforter, even the title giving the reader some sense of the warmth and affection he felt for these animals.

In addition to treating his ideas like cats, Bradbury stated that “I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing”.  Anyone who has tried to read a newspaper with a cat in the room certainly knows that feeling!

Bradbury is certainly not the only author who shares his life with cats. Blogger Bobby Pfeiffer, who alleges that cats are a writer’s best friend, notes that: “Writers are great people.  They might be rambling lunatics or lazy drunkards or unpleasant anti-socials or even ordinary dullards, but they are still great.  You know why?  Because a) they write and b) they love cats. No man or a woman who loves language and stories, and keeps a furry friend around can be a bad person.” Pfeiffer has collected a fascinating selection of photos of authors as illustrious as Stephen King, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Carol Oates, William Faulkner, William Burroughs, Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, Samuel Beckett and Herman Hesse, in addition to Bradbury, all in the company of their cats.

Another article on writing and cats adds TS Eliot, Mark Twain, William Butler Yeats, Patricia Highsmith, Charles Dickens and Neil Gaiman to the list of ailurophile authors.  Of course, we are not suggesting that it is absolutely necessary to share your home with a cat or two in order to produce prize-winning prose, but it sure sounds like it helps. Just in case, if you are an aspiring author, visit your local animal shelter or Toronto Cat Rescue to help enable your next prize-winning novel. Tell them Ray sent you.

Remembering Chinua Achebe 1930 - 2013

  

Chinua Achebe, the father of modern African literature, has died at the age of 82 in Boston.  Born in Nigeria in 1930, Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958) took the world by storm and set the stage for Africa to reclaim the literary voice usurped by her colonizers.  Novelist, critic, political activist, professor, and poet - the power and influence of Achebe's work and legacy is staggering.

Read about it here: CBC, Globe, Toronto Star, Guardian,  BBC, Times Nigeria, The New York Times, Ottawa Citizen, Washington Post, and in the AllAfrica Times.

Read (or re-read) Achebe's works.  Here is a selection available at the Toronto Public Library:  

 

Things Fall Apart is also available on Audiobook.

Check out the Guardian's photo gallery.  Toronto's 680 News has posted selected quotes.

Read what the Guardian had to say when Achebe was awarded the International Man Booker Prize in 2007.

 Watch the 2008 PBS Interview: Achebe Discusses Africa 50 Years After Things Fall Apart:

 

 

Achebe, aged 26