The Dragon Book

This week when we got back from Peterborough, there was a new book from Penguin Canada waiting for me. A collection of never-before published stories, The Dragon Book features - you guessed it - stories about dragons.

Lots & lots of dragons. Big fiery dragons, annoying little ones, a worm-like dragon, talking/non-talking dragons... all sorts of dragons.

And of course, all sorts of other characters to go with them.

There are a lot of big name authors who have contributed to this edition, including Jonathon Stroud, Gregory Maguire, Diana Gabaldon, Tamora Pierce and many others. Edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, the collection includes stories for everyone.

It's unlikely that any one reader is likely to enjoy every story - there are a few that just did not engage my interest, and given the limited amount of time I have for reading texts-that-aren't-on-the-syllabus these days, I happily moved on to those that did.

But with this many well-written stories to choose from, it just doesn't matter - there is still plenty of excellent reading in The Dragon Book. My particular favourite is "Oakland Dragon Blues" by Peter S. Beagle, although Kate Baker's "Are You Afflicted With Dragons" is a close second.

Whether you are looking for great reading for yourself, or perhaps a gift for a dragon-loving friend or family member, The Dragon Book is sure to please.

Read more...

My ~New~ Book - Seeds of Pine

On the way home from Peterborough today, Ross & I stopped at an antique shop. Lots of WAY cool stuff - including a $5000 desk that I am now coveting....and $600+ light fixtures that would be PERFECT in our Peterborough house.

Actually, also makes me wonder how much some of the light fixtures we DO have might be worth - there is one right inside the front door that looks like it has probably been there since the house was built in the early 1900s. It's missing a shade though - and not something you can just pick up at Home Depot.

Anyway, in addition to bunches of way cool antiques that would be PERFECT for the P. house, they also had a very nice selection of books. LOTS of Canadiana - and since I'm in Canadian Studies, now, I have a much better excuse to buy Canadiana, right? Right!

There were plenty I would have liked to buy - there was a Canadian military history that almost came home with me - but then we spotted a 1922 edition of Seeds of Pine by Janey Canuck.

Janey Canuck was the pen name of Emily Ferguson Murphy, who is one of the so-called Famous Five, "the women who carried the Persons Case to the Privy Council in England where, on October 18, 1929, the decision was handed down that women were persons qualified to become members of the Senate of Canada" (Library and Archives Canada). She was a social activist, the founder of the Federated Women's Institute for rural women, and in 1916, she became the first female police magistrate in the British Empire.

Most of what I have found out about her is focused on her activism rather than her literature - I'm looking forward to reading the book to find out why. And to assess whether this might be a potential editing project for an aspiring Canadian Studies PhD student! Will have to see what there is in the archives about her too... perhaps I shall have a look when I am in Ottawa next month. (Like I need more archive work! But seriously, I am interested)

Read more...

Still Around

Funny, isn't it? Now that I am in Canadian Studies, I just don't seem to have much time for reading Canadian fiction.

Obviously, I am going to have to make time for it again! I'm going into withdrawal.

Right at the moment though, I'm mostly engaged in reading Canadian NONfiction. Suppose I could write about some of that too.

Will spare you the many academic articles I have been reading for my core course - interesting as they may be. Actually, I have enjoyed reading them far more than I expected to. I'm a little embarassed at how much I have already learned - I am almost 50 years old and have lived in Canada for all but a few years (during which we lived in Germany; I'm an air force brat) - and I was around for many of the events I have been reading about - I just didn't pay much attention!

I should know a lot more about Canada than I do - and by the end of this year, I will.

But I am reading a couple of interesting nonfiction books - got 3 on the go right now, actually.

One is Taking Back Our Spirits by Jo-Ann Episkenew - a book about Indigenous literature, public policy and healing that is based on the author's PhD thesis. I met Jo-Ann at Congress earlier this year, and will hopefully see her again at Congress next year as well. The book is highly readable - a LOT more readable than many other based-on-thesis books I've waded through - and I'm sure that I will be able to use it.

I've also just finished Joseph Gold's The Story Species - that would be us, i.e. humans. A very interesting read, and like Taking Back Our Spirits, very relevant to my thesis research. Gold also wrote Read For Your Life which I absolutely love, and which is the most commonly cited book in many of my research papers - it is an excellent resource on the function of fiction, which is, of course, the topic of my doctoral research. Me - I'm doing doctoral research - isn't that cool?!

My bathtub book right now is also Canadian nonfiction - I've been reading Neil Sutherland's book about the history of childhood in Canada (Growing Up). I've read one chapter of this work numerous times - "When You Listen to the Winds of Childhood" - I used it when I was working on my honours essay in fourth year, and have used it since, also. When I saw the book in a used book store, I had to buy it.... but just now getting around to actually reading it!

Read more...

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is the last of the books I added to use as an exemplars for my major research paper on fiction for emerging adults (18 - 25 year olds). I had intended to use Slam! by Nicholas Hornby, but was never as enthusiastic about it (it was originally published in the U.K. not in Canada - and there were rather too many similarities between it and one of the other novels I am using, Having Faith in the Polar Girls Prison by Cathleen With - not that the two books are really all that similar - but both deal with teenage pregnancy).

So when The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet was suggested as one which fit in with what I'm doing, I happily accepted a copy and now, having read it, have decided to use it.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet was written by Reif Larsen and is about 12 yo T.S. a genius mapmaker who wins an award and fellowship at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. He does not go to his parents (Dad's a rancher not into all the science stuff, Mom's a self-absorbed scientist) or even to his supposed mentor (who is the person that nominated him for the award) but rather sets out on his own, hobo-ing his way there by train.

The book is unique in that it provides maps, diagrams and other assorted materials in its margins, and also includes a secondary work supposedly written by T.S.'s mother. I found these bits somewhat challenging at first - I have attention issues so a novel which includes its own distractions can be a bit frustrating - but soon discovered that they were well worth exploring and really did add a great deal to the experience of reading The Selected Works.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is, as Stephen King calls it, "a treasure", and has a great deal to offer; I did, however, find the ending of the book to be rather a disappointment; Dad shows up and they run away through secret tunnels presumably heading for home, the end. Fortunately, it wasn't the ending that made the experience worthwhile though - clearly, in this novel, it is the journey that matters.

Canadian

Canadian

Read more...

Too Many Girls!

I have decided that I have too many emerging adult girls in my facebook connections and not enough boys.

My paper on emerging adults and Canadian publishing kept running into issues because of my not having been able to push the Internet survey bit through the Ethics committee's process - I had to axe that part of my application in order to get approval to do anything. Yesterday I hit upon a solution - a way of gathering data about what fiction emerging adults are reading: I logged into the weRead application in facebook and was able to copy & paste the titles/authors for all of my connections who are in the emerging adult group. Which gives me a lot of what I needed to work with - except for the fact that I only have a very few EA males as connections at all and not one of them uses the weRead app.

If you happen to have any 18 - 25 yo (preferably Canadian, but not necessarily) male friends/family/connections that use weRead (or Shelfari or any other such app) I sure could use your help to make a connection with them (assuming they don't mind) .... all I'm doing is making a list of the books in their collections - I'm not allowed to actually interview or anything :(

Read more...