Kathleen Molloy

Frank of Gatineau asked:

Aren’t you afraid someone will steal your book?

Frank was referring to the posting of Dining with Death on Google Books.  Dining with Death, and its mate La Mort au menu, has been uploaded for all Canadian book lovers to browse.

No, Frank, I am not afraid of anyone stealing my books. I’m pleased to share the content, and anticipate that readers will see something they like, something that will bring them into local bookstores to order the books for their book clubs.

And I love the feature of searching for keywords. I plugged in: Chocolate, Canadian Tire, and topless.

Presto! Up pops the sections where topless chocolate eaters at Canadian Tire appear. Kidding – there are no scenes of topless eaters of chocolate at Canadian Tire, in these two stories. There is chocolate, there is toplessness, and because you can’t have a Canadian story without Canadian Tire, we see Canadian Tire again and again.

Neat, eh.

http://books.google.ca/

You know Mark Frutkin from Fabrizio’s Return. You may have already snatched up his new quasi-autobiographical journal Erratic North: A Vietnam Draft Resister’s Life in the Canadian Bush.

Frutkin is my 10^th west Quebec author and the whole time I read Slow Lighting I wanted to eat Spanish oranges.

Slow Lightening is the perfect title. The story is about a university student caught up in political unrest, something he didn’t create, can’t control, and can’t escape – like lightening. It’s like watching distant lightening slowly creeping toward you … and when you’re under it … KABOOM!

Frutkin mixes humour with politics; a cocktail I adore.

Find Frutkin’s books here:

http://www.markfrutkin.com/books.html#slow

Here is Frutkin’s interview with the Ottawa Citizen on Draft Resister:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=a751c3d6-c7cd-4b81-a938-cf3407e9de03&p=1

Kathleen Molloy

On Heather’s blog she asked if there has been a book you simply couldn’t read.

 I’ve always tried to give a book a second chance–just like a blind date.

I kept Tomson Highway beside my bed for two years. I had met Tomson in Halifax, and then heard him speak at a gala and was equally wowed. I have since enjoyed all of his plays passing through my town, particularly Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing. He is an amazingly creative playwright and author and someone whom I admire greatly for the way he grabs a difficult subject by the throat and chokes out something beautiful.

But I couldn’t continue reading his work Kiss of the Fur Queen. The plot of the boys being abused was too much for me, despite the beautiful way he offered up the Fur Queen.  I just couldn’t handle it.

Now, on the fun side, Tomson mentioned he was toying with the idea of doing a piece on the Last Supper where the women didn’t simply cook the Last Supper but ate at the table.  Now that I will enjoy!

A CBC interview with Highway is here:

http://www.cbc.ca/lifeandtimes/highway.html

More applauds and accolades are here:

http://www.naaf.ca/html/t_highway_e.html

And so the Book Blogger Appreciation Week Sept 15-19 passed and what have we learned?

·         Everyone loves the 2^nd Canadian Book Challenge.

·         Everyone loves the 2^nd Canadian Book Challenge’s founder John Mutford.

The idea for Book Blogger Appreciation Week was to allow book blogging book lovers to interview each other so that readers could get the dirty scoop on them.  See what Scrub-a-dub-tub scrapped out from behind John’s ears…

http://thereadingtub.blogspot.com/2008/09/interview-with-john-mutford.html

The Montreal Antiquarian Book Fair will be held on the ground floor of the McConnell Library Building at Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve Boul., on Saturday, Sept. 27 from noon to 6 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 28 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $6 for the two days.

Author Ian Rogers has hit on something that has been bugging me.  Like Rogers I have just read the UofT Alumni magazine’s article on author Andrew Pyper, wherein criticism of Pyper’s CanLit status has been put to the test. What genre does Pyper’s story The Killing Circle fit into? Why are we so inclined to squeeze it into a box, squeeze all well-selling Canadian books into a well-labelled box? Rogers speaks of CanLit snobbery.  

http://www.ian-rogers.com/journal/2008/09/22/canlit-snobbery/

 I put two questions out: 1)   would Northrop Frye have enjoyed The Killing Circle? 2) Would my mother have enjoyed it?

I argue that it isn’t the story that speaks to the genre but the reader. 

Decide for yourself.  http://www.andrewpyper.com/

The October - November  2008 edition of Walrus features and excerpt from Patrick Lane’s novel Red Dog, Red Dog. Farm life, lonely isolated Prairie farm life, neglected farm woman hot for the first man who happens past the fence,  and men folk doing unkind things to their daughters…did I read this story before?

Let’s take nothing away from Lane; the excerpt is superb.

What bothers me is that this seems to be another story about Prairies dwellers being unkind to each other.  In Red Dog, Red Dog we learn that a father has repeatedly tied his daughter from a barn beam to write his name on her back with his strap.

Given that Walrus readers were only treated to a mini excerpt of the novel, I would like to believe that acts of kindness do run through Lane’s story. But at the same time, I would be surprised if there were so many acts of kindness that the reader would trip over them.

PrairieLit often leaves me profoundly sad. And Prairie writers keep pumping out these melancholy tales. Why is that?

Let’s ask David Adler. He teaches a CanLit-Prairie focused course at a Canadian University based in Toronto – he is a real sucker for Prairie authors.  So David, what’s the deal with those Canadian Prairie authors who intentionally tie my heartstrings in knots?

Let’s see if his Canadianist blog has any clues:

http://canecdotes.blogspot.com/2008/07/first-canadian-writer-to-hit-thirty.html

We’ve now have a bookseller’s account with http://www.biblio.com/

Both Dining with Death and La Mort au menu are available. There is a current promotion when 5 books are bought at the same time. Woohoooo.  Happy shopping.

 When I was a girl I salivated over the Scholastic Books pamphlets each time the teacher sent them home. Mom was patient as I tried to decide which book to spend my birthday money on. We had a rule: 1 book per order. Sometimes Mom paid, sometimes I paid, and sometimes I slipped my dad a second order form and tricked him into paying for additional books.   Scholastic is a fantastic distributor of kids’ books that frequently showcases Canadian authors with Canadian themes. Their scheme is simple; hook the teachers into hooking the kids into ordering books. The parent pays, the books are delivered to the classroom, and the school handles all the cheques. Books are priced at discounted rates and kids walk away with their backpacks loaded. I’m now living the Scholastic Scheme with my kids. And I admit … I’m a bit torn.  

By ordering the books through Scholastic am I doing a disservice to the local indie booksellers? Scholastic has been in bed with the school system for as long as I can remember.  Indie booksellers on the other hand are still trying to get a date.

All the same, does have the neat Canadian Showcase web page and the neat Dear Canada webpage.

http://www.scholastic.ca/kids/canadianshowcase/

and

http://www.scholastic.ca/dearcanada/index2.htm

Indies know what local parents want.  Indies bring in local authors for story time. Indies serve fancy coffee.

Yup, I’m split in two, like the zipper on my kid’s new backpack.

At a second-hand bookstore today, I picked up a copy of Speak Ill of the Dead. You will recall that I read this first book of the Camilla MacPhee Mystery series as one of my 13 west Quebec authors for the 2^nd Canadian Book Challenge. I picked up this second copy today because I had already book crossed author Mary Jane Maffini out to Winnipeg by the time two readers wrote to request that I hold on to Speak Ill of the Dead so that we could trade Canadian authors.

When I got home today, and started to prepare my Book Crossing label I discovered the following inscription:

“To Marcia, look for the Nova Scotia clues, enjoy – Mary Jane.”

Poor Marcia. I bet she’s looking under her bed for this one.  You snooze, you lose, Marcia. This signed copy is going down east as a prize to a Nova Scotian lover of Canadian mystery books. 

It’s a contest. 

To qualify:           1) you have to be a Nova Scotian reader who loves Canadian mystery books

                                2) you have to send a comment to this blog to tell readers who your all-time favourite Canadian mystery writer is and the title you’d buy twice.

3) you can also be a non-Nova Scotian lover of Canadian mystery books too and try your luck at a mystery prize

[Did I mention that there will also be a mystery prize to a non-Nova Scotian who also loves Canadian mystery writers?]

Post your comment before Halloween 2008 and I’ll pick two random readers to win.  Nova Scotians and Everyone Else are welcome to try. Post your comment and try your luck.

 I’ll be happy to know that this signed second copy of Speak Ill of the Dead is in good hands.