The Watch That Ends the Night by Hugh MacLennan

I mistakenly noted that I received this book “from the publisher” in my 20 Books of Summer list. Actually, I received it as part of a promotional push for Douglas Gibson’s 2011 memoir, Stories About Storytellers. The memoir is centered on his lengthy career in publishing, during which he oversaw and edited CanLit classics from luminaries like MacLennan, as well as Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Robertson Davies, and Alastair MacLeod.

In 2013, Gibson set up “The Storytellers Book Club“, with lengthy discussion questions for a selection of books covered in Storytellers. Bloggers were invited to review those books for chance to win the whole selection. I submitted this review of Alice Munro’s The Progress of Love and won, then proceeded to neither read nor review the rest of the books, because I suck. I also just realized, nearly six years later, that Gibson responded to my blog post about the contest (see his comment here), and I never responded. Now I feel really bad!

So in the style of that Munro review, I’ll give you a few quick impressions, then attempt one or two of Gibson’s discussion questions. As I noted back in 2013, Gibson’s questions are a bit biased, but I’ll work with them.

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Winter Journal by Paul Auster

Before starting Winter Journal, the first of my 20 Books of Summer, I tried really hard to clear the decks and finish off all the physical and ebooks I was reading prior to June 3. But books are meant to be in e with each other, as the saying goes, and so I found myself in the middle of listening to How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen when it was time to start Winter Journal, and did they ever have a conversation.

I vaguely knew that Paul Auster and Jonathan Frazen had a few things in common. They both live in New York (at least part time), they are both married to writers, they are both Baby Boomers. They’re both critically acclaimed, commercially successful novelists, though they are on rather different ends of the spectrum when it comes to being controversial (“name” + “controversy” brings up no relevant results for Mr. Auster, Mr. Frazen’s results reference at least five separate incidents on the first page.)

Portraits of the artists as young men

Even so, I didn’t expect these books to be drawing from such similar circumstances and emotions. Both books are driven by grief, specifically, the loss of parents. In Auster’s case, death is quick and unexpected, while Franzen’s parents get sick and linger, but I was struck but how both men end up suffering extreme physical reactions – hives, panic attacks – when they can’t or won’t express their grief any other way. And how vulnerable they get in these books, challenging the traditional masculine response to grief.

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Clearing the decks and caveats: 20 Books of Summer 2019

Clearing the decks

We are less than a week out from the start of 20 Books of Summer, so of course I’m in the middle of a bunch of books. I’m trying to clear the decks so I can start my first book, Paul Auster’s Winter Journal, with a clear schedule (see my full TBR here). Here’s what I have to deal with first:

Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson

For Mel’s Read Around the World Book Club, which I am taking part in for the first time. Reading an author I’m familiar with, and who lives in my hometown, seems a little contrary to the spirit of “reading around the world”, but I’m glad to finally take part. Mel is a favourite on Booktube, and recently made a video just for me, after I publicly announced my incompetence when it comes to video editing. The book itself is a tricky one: I DNF’d it a few years ago, and this time around, I was well past 100 pages by the time the story started to click. I would recommend Son of a Trickster over this one.

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20 Books of Summer 2019

Cathy of 746 Books has been running the 20 Books of Summer challenge since 2014, and after watching the first five rounds from afar, I’m jumping in.

The idea is to read *and review* 20 books over the summer (June 3 – September 3). Cathy is quite reasonable about swapping out books if needed, adjusting targets etc. That said, I shall try to stick to the list below, which was created with a random number generator and a list of my physical TBR (currently sitting at 80 books), and some executive decision making – I stacked the deck in favour of Women in Translation month in August. I may substitute library ebooks or audiobooks for the paper copies, but will try to stick to the list and read in order, too.

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Literary Smut: An appreciation and some recommendations

Inspired by some recent racy reads, I made a video about smutty literary fiction (as opposed to smutty smut). I’ve blogged about sexy times in books a few times here on Reading in Bed, but talking about it with my voice (and my face!) is another prospect, and a little cringey. I’m glad I did it though, because I got some great recommendations for further highbrow smuttery in the comments. I’d like to share them with all of you, and of course, ask you for even more – I’ll update the post.

There’s not much Franzen in this video, this was just the best default thumbnail option and I’m too lazy to make my own

The books I mentioned are:

  • Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce (trigger warning for everything)
  • Smut by Alan Bennett (wonderful!)
  • The Bride Stripped Bare by Anonymous (an oldie but a goodie)
  • After Claude by Iris Owens (more trigger warnings!)
  • Birthday Girl by Penelope Douglas (this one wasn’t great, nor is it literary fiction. In case you don’t make it that far in the vid)

The books other recommended to me are:

  • Stranger by the Lake (a movie, but including it, why not!)
  • Love Life by Zeruya Shalev
  • Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett
  • “Housewife” by Jenny Diski (in the collection The Vanishing Princess)
  • Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin
  • House of Holes by Nicholson Baker
  • Suicide Blonde by Darcey Steinke
  • The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
  • The Pisces by Melissa Broder
  • Pretty Things by Virginie Despentes
  • Maidenhead by Tamara Faith Berger
  • The Change Room by Karen Connelly

Send me some recs, and let me know what you think of explicit sex in lit fic.

How weird is too weird? Commentary on random pages from Love in the New Millennium by Can Xue

I’ve read some weird stuff since getting into literature in translation last year. That’s part of the appeal, right? Translated lit is an easy way to find something different, something experimental, maybe something surreal and dreamlike. Last year, I discovered László Krasznahorkai and his intensely weird story collection The World Goes On. I didn’t really “get it,” but I liked it. I also discovered Olga Tokarczuk, who won the Man Booker International Prize with a novel that defies genre. She calls her writing style a “constellation” and I don’t know if we really have that in English. I just finished an odd little book called The Order of the Day, also a prize winner, that is classified as a récit or an “account” rather than straight up non-fiction.

I could go on: a novel told in Facebook-status-like headlines, a speculative fiction about a world where only the elderly are healthy, whatever the heck Comemadre is about.

But now, I think I’ve hit my limit. I’ve found a translated novel that is too difficult to classify, too unmoored, too opaque, just too weird: Love in the New Millennium.

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Blurbing the Blurb: A recommendation of Songs for the Cold of Heart by Éric Dupont

During my hiatus, I wrote a “recommend” for Canadian literary website 49th Shelf. Songs for the Cold of Heart has been on my mind lately, as various translated book award long and short lists are being announced. I was hoping to see it crop up – but alas, no Canadians at all are in the running for either the Man Booker International Prize or the Best Translated Book Award. Let’s take a moment and appreciate the book and the blurb, in both official languages. 

I am a blurb skeptic. Blurbs are, at best, the most biased form of literary criticism. Just check how often a blurber’s name appears on the acknowledgements page. At worst, blurbs are clichéd, or taken out of out of context, or of dubious veracity (did Gary Shteyngart really read all those books?).

The blurb on Songs for the Cold of Heart got all my skeptic senses tingling:

“If the Americans have John Irving and the Colombians Gabriel García Márquez, we have Eric Dupont. And he’s every bit as good as them.”—Voir

Like most Canadiens anglais, I didn’t hear of Éric Dupont until this English translation hit the Giller Prize longlist in 2018. I wondered if he was really as good as Irving and Márquez, two luminaries of world literature (and longtime personal favourites of mine). Or was this blurb just another bloated piece of hype?

Read the rest of my recommendation on 49th Shelf, as well as those of other luminaries, including Karen Hofmann, whose debut I reviewed five years ago and who since wrote another great novel with a very meta title: What is Going to Happen Next.

Thanks for indulging me with this mini-post while I try to get back in the swing of things! Let me know if you generally believe the blurb, or if you side-eye them as much as I do. Sadly, Shteyngart Blurbs is no longer updating, but I maintain that he must have been bullshitting at least some of the time.

2018 Year in Review

As I prepare to go dark at the end of this week, here’s how the year stacked up. I’m taking some liberties with a few books that I’m not quite finished, but certainly will be before Dec. 31, including the Short Story Advent Calendar.

Books Read

every boy

My Goodreads Challenge got arrowed

About the Author

  • 56% female, trans, or non-binary
  • 64% person of colour
  • 24% Canadian, 31% American, 29% European, 5% Asian, 4% South American, and a couple from the Middle East, Caribbean, and Africa
  • 54% originally written in English, 14% in French, 8% in Spanish, and a few each in the following: Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Danish, Italian, Latvian, Greek, Korean, Norwegian, Iraqi, Hungarian, Polish, and German.

bla

I basically speak French now

Blog Stats

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(Taking a) Break (from) the Internet

douglas-coupland-i-miss-my-pre-internet-brain-800x800

From Douglas Coupland’s “Slogans for the 21st Century”

This is a self-indulgent post (“as opposed to what?” you may well ask) meant to solidify my plans and give myself a little accountability, but it could be used it as a guide or jumping off point for anyone looking to take a break from the internet.

Yes, let’s go with that.

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Novellas in November 2018 Round Up #2

And wrap up, because it’s over!

Novellas read: 13
Goodreads Challenge: momentarily caught up, already behind again
Five-star reads: 2

Since my last update, I read eight more novellas. In the spirit of #NovNov, here they are, very briefly reviewed:

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

I thought this was a book about race, but it’s really about the relationship between religion and race and America, all in about 100 pages. Continue reading →