The Buzz...About Books

Meet Robert J. Sawyer at North York Central Library

Award-winning science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer will appear at North York Central Library on May 1, 7-8 pm as part of the 2013 Eh List Reading Series. Mr. Sawyer will be discussing his latest novel Red Planet Blues.

In his illustrious career, Sawyer has won each of the three major science fiction awards:

Hugo Award for Best Novel: Hominids (2003)
Also available as: Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

John W. Campbell Memorial Award: Mindscan (2006)

Nebula Award for Best Novel: The Terminal Experiment (1996)
Also available as: eBook

In addition he has won the Prix Aurora Award seven times in the Best Novel/Long Form category:

1992:
Golden Fleece

1996:
The Terminal Experiment
• eBook

1997:
Starplex

2000:
Flashforward
• Talking Book

2010:
Wake
• Audiobook
• eAudiobook
• eBook

2011:
Watch
• Audiobook
• eAudiobook
• eBook
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

2012:
Wonder
• eBook

For more information about this event please call 416-395-5639.

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.  

From a Spark to a Flame: Fire in Fahrenheit 451

Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.

Destruction, comfort, rebirth. There is a lot of fire in Fahrenheit 451 and its meaning changes for different characters and in different situations.

Guy Montag, the book's protagonist is a fireman--a book burner. The fires he sets professionally used to threaten and control the citizens and Guy loves his work. He likes "to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed".

As the book progresses, Montag finds himself being changed. The spark of imagination spreads like a wildfire from Clarisse to Guy. His curiosity grows, fuelled by encounters with Professor Faber and an old woman who refuses to leave her burning house.

Fire is a destructive force in the novel, but it also provides Guy with a way to escape. He uses a flame thrower to destroy the Mechanical Hound that is hunting him and also to murder Captain Beatty. On the run, he meets the Book People who welcome him with a campfire and they watch a bomb destroy the city. Granger, the leader of the Book People views this as an opportunity for rebirth, believing that civilization will rise from the ashes.

More about Fahrenheit 451:

A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories by Ray Bradbury
• eAudiobook

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 edited by Harold Bloom

Readings on Fahrenheit 451 edited by Katie de Koster

Prometheus Award Nominations

The Prometheus Award shortlist was announced earlier this month. This literary award honours science fiction and fantasy works "that stress the importance of liberty as the foundation for civilization, peace, prosperity, progress and justice".

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Toronto Public Library's One Book selection for 2013, was inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame in 1984 as an example of classic libertarian science fiction.

Best Novel Nominees:

Arctic Rising by Tobias Buckell

Darkship Renegades by Sarah Hoyt

Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez
• eAudiobook

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

The Unincorporated Future by Dani and Eytan Kollin

The winner will be announced at LoneStarCon3, the World Science Fiction Convention held from August 29 to September 3 in San Antonio, Texas.

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.

Beyond Fahrenheit 451: 5 Other Ray Bradbury Books You Should Read

If reading Fahrenheit 451 has whetted your appetite for Ray Bradbury, you are in luck. He began publishing stories in science fiction magazines as a teenager and wrote daily until shortly before his death at the age of 91. Over the course of his writing career he produced 30 books, 600 short stories, poems, essays, screenplays and plays.

It is hard to suggest just five books from his impressive bibliography. The books on this list each represent a type of writing from Bradbury's prolific career.

Dandelion Wine

In Bradbury's most personal book, he combines the memories of his own childhood with fantasy. Set in the summer of 1928 in a small Illinois town, twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding awakens to the richness of life for the first time. He feels truly alive, exhilarated by the ordinary activities. As the summer progresses however, Doug begins to notice that change, loss and even death are as inevitable as the changing seasons.

    • Audiobook
    • eAudiobook
    • Large Print
    • Regular Print: Avon Books
    • Regular Print: Knopf
    • Regular Print: Revised Bantam Edition

Let's All Kill Constance

Although better known for speculative fiction, Bradbury also tried his hand at the mystery genre. In this novel, a writer not unlike Bradbury himself, is drawn into an investigation after an aging movie star bursts into his house claiming she's being threatened.

    • Large Print
    • Regular Print
 
The Martian Chronicles 
Bradbury describes the colonization of Mars in a series of linked short stories. Along with Fahrenheit 451, this is considered one of Bradbury's masterpieces.

    • eAudiobook
    • Regular Print: Avon Revised Edition
    • Regular Print: Doubleday
    • Regular Print: Fortieth Anniversary Edition
    • Regular Print: Spectra/Bantam

Something Wicked This Way Comes
Something Wicked This Way Comes is considered horror fiction.  It tells the story of two young boys whose lives are changed after a sinister carnival visits their town.

    • eAudiobook: Read by Kevin Foley
    • eAudiobook: Dramatization by The Colonial Radio Theater of the Air
    • Large Print
    • Regular Print: Avon Books
    • Regular Print: Bantam Edition

The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Bradbury was a masterful short story writer. This volume contains 100 of Bradbury's best stories including The Veldt, The Sound of Thunder and The Black Ferris, which provided the basis for Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Related Posts:

• A Firefighter's Take on Fahrenheit 451
• Ray Bradbury: 1920-2012
• This Guy Matters: Anti-Heroes in Literature

Join us in April as we discuss Fahrenheit 451 on Book Buzz: Toronto Public Library's Online Bookclub.

It's About Time: Fiction about Time Travel

Daylight savings time starts officially at 2 am on Sunday March 10 and continues until November 3. We'll lose an hour of sleep this weekend but will get extra daylight in the evenings.

I always have a hard time adjusting to these time shifts. Just imagine how much harder it would be if I were a time-traveller.

This is a short selection of recently published time-travel novels for adults.

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress
• eBook
In 2035, a small group of humans is trapped after an alien invasion. Portals that will allow time travel exist but can only transport children. In 2013, an FBI analyst must formulate a plan that will solve the crisis.

Here I Go Again by Jen Lancaster
Lissy attends her high school reunion to relive the glory days when she ruled the school but discovers that her classmates still resent her for bullying them. Lissy is offered an opportunity to travel back to her high school years and correct her behaviour but when she returns to the "new" present, she discovers that she may have made things worse.

The Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell
• eBook
A time-traveller journeys to a Manhattan hotel in 2071 to celebrate his 100th birthday with younger and older versions of himself but is horrified to find that his 40-year-old self has been murdered and sets out to prevent the crime.

The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma
• eAudiobook
A bestseller in the author's native Spain, this book blends fact and fiction as H.G. Wells becomes a time-travelling detective.

Revenant Eve by Sherwood Smith
College professor Kim Murray is planning her wedding when she suddenly finds herself transported to 1795 France to protect a young girl. This mission will ensure the safety of her own family but if Kim fails, she well may cease to exist.

Ask library staff for more suggestions.

A Discovery of Witches

If witches and vampires lived among us in the modern world what jobs would they take to fit into society? Well they would be historians, scientists and geneticists of course!

Diana Bishop is the descendant of a long line of witches; however, she has rebuked witchcraft and is determined to live her life as a normal historian scholar at Oxford. One day while studying in Oxford's Bodleian Library, she selects an alchemy book from the stacks, which she quickly discovers has been bewitched. She returns it, determined to have nothing to do with sorcery.

Unfortunately, the book is a palimpsest believed to document the origin of supernatural beings. It has been lost for centuries and now the underworld of daemons, witches and vampires descend on Oxford to regain the book and its power.

The first supernatural being to approach Diana is 1,500 year old vampire and geneticist Matthew Clairmont. Matthew warns her of what her discovery has set in motion and vows to protect her from the horde. As the supernatural begin to stalk and harass her, Diana must decide if she will use magic against them and take her first step towards the life she has been trying to avoid.

Also available in:
Large Print
Audiobook
eBook
eAudiobook

And I Feel Fine: Books for the End of the World as We Know It

December 21 is the date of the winter solstice but this year some people fear that it could also mark the end of the world. A great deal of this speculation is centred on the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar which "ends" on or around December 21, 2012. Scholars have pointed out that the calendar is cyclical and while December 21 marks the end of an era, it does not mean that the world is also ending but rather that a new epoch is beginning. This has not prevented speculation about the end of the world, however. Popular theories include a massive solar flare, a collision with Planet X/Nibiru, and a galactic alignment that will destroy the Earth's gravitational field. NASA has disputed these theories on their website.

Toronto Public Library has both fiction and non-fiction titles about the December 21 apocalypse. If the world doesn't end, you'll have time to read them all.

Fiction

12.21 by Dustin Thomason
• Audiobook
• eAudiobook
• eBook
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

2012: the War for Souls by Whitley Strieber

The Crystal Skull by Manda Scott
• Large Print

In the Courts of the Sun by Brian D'Amato

The Twelve by William Gladstone

Non-Fiction

The 2012 Story: the Myths, Fallacies and Truth behind the Most Intriguing Date in History by John Major Jenkins

Apocalypse 2012: a Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End by Lawrence E. Joseph

Beyond 2012: Catastrophe or Awakening?: a Complete Guide to End-of-Time Predictions by Geoff Stray

The Book of Destiny: Unlocking the Secrets of the Ancient Maya and the Prophesy of 2012 by Carlos Barrios

The Complete Idiots Guide to 2012 by Synthia Andrews

Decoding 2012: Doom, Destiny, or Just Another Day? by Melissa Rossi

The Everything Guide to 2012: All you need to Know about the Theories, Beliefs and History Surrounding the Ancient Mayan Prophesies by Mark Heley

The Order of Days: the Maya World and the Truth about 2012 by David Stuart

The Source Field Investigations: the Hidden Science and Lost Civilizations behind the 2012 Prophesies by David Wilcock
• Audiobook
• eBook

Twilight of the Gods: the Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials by Erich von Däniken

Want more books about the end of the world? Take a look at these blog posts:

• Apocalypse Now?
• Seeking a Book for the End of the World
  
• Zombie Apocalypse Now?

The bleaker, the better: More great dystopian reads

Earlier last month, I posted a few titles - mostly teen fiction - that painted dreary futures of tyrannical governments, genetic experimentations gone awry and more. There were, of course, still many more titles I missed, and I had loads of suggestions from readers who had some of their own picks to share.

Here are some more featured dystopian reads, including favourites from commenters, and some more I wanted to add in. When it comes to dystopian reading, you can never get too wierd or too creepy, so if you think this list is too tame, consider this a challenge to bring it on!

The Classics
These have been around forever - and with good reason. You may have read some of these in school, and they may have actually *gasp!* interested you! If you haven't yet, make time to get yourself into the worlds of these writers who were ahead of their times.

1. 1984 by George Orwell (reader suggestion!)
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (reader suggestion!)
3. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
4. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (reader suggestion!)

If you'd like to try your luck, you can also walk into a local library branch and check out the Classic paperback section for the titles above.

Hot for Teens
Fresh off the success of hits like The Hunger Games and Divergent, there have been a slew of young adult books that deal with themes of isolation, loss of identity, and power struggles - usually against the backdrop of mass government control. Here are some other titles to get you psyched (and maybe just a little paranoid...)

1. Scored by Lauren McLaughlin
2. This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers
3. A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan
4. Beta by Rachel Cohn
5. Feed by MT Anderson (reader suggestion!)
6. Unwind by Neal Shusterman

You've heard of it...now read it!
You may have seen the screen adaptation or had a friend gush over how much she loved this book...and cha nces are, you haven't quite read the book yet. Why wait?

 

1. We by Yevgeny Zamyat in (reader suggestion!)
2.   The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin (reader suggestion!)
3. The Book of Dave by Will Self (reader suggestion!)
   
4. World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler (reader suggestion!)
5. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (considered more utopian, actually...)
6. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
7. World War Z by Max Brooks
8. The Devil's Alphabet by Daryl Gregory
9. Blindness by Jose Saramago
10. Battle Royale by Koushun Tamaki

Remember that many of these titles are available in a number of formats, including paperback, ebook and audio, so you can read it however you want.

Happy Reading!