my favorite blue-eyed Ojibway

I have been smitten with Drew Hayden Taylor since I read his play, Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth, in 1998. He is very talented. He is also cute (sorry Drew, but you are), and by turns cheeky, sarcastic and thoughtful. Drew had lunch with me today to promote Me Funny, a collection of essays he edited on Native humor.

Drew is one of a rare breed: a writer who actually makes a living from writing. He's an award-winning playwright (Toronto at Dreamer's Rock), author (Fearless Warriors), columnist (Funny You Don't Look Like One: Observations of a Blue-Eyed Ojibway), documentary film maker (Redskins, Tricksters and Puppy Stew) and now lecturer on aboriginal culture.

Me Funny is an irreverent, insightful look at the humor, wittiness and repartee of Canada's First Nations, written by a stellar list of contributors that includes Tomson Highway, Don Kelly and Thomas King. It is both academic and raucous, with jokes to make the most politically correct of us squirm.

We talked of Drew's performance at the Kennedy Centre, the German love of all things Indian and his new vampire novel for young adults. Here is his site.

bruce kirkby: adventure man

Bruce Kirkby was in town recently and we coffeed over his new book, The Dolphin's Tooth. Tall, jovial and both tanned and bleached by the sun, the 37-year-old Kirkby was born too late. At heart he is the quintessential Victorian explorer, even meeting his fiance on a cycling trip in Tibet.

The Dolphin's Tooth is the story of Kirkby's adventures (and travails) in some of the world's most remote spots, and about his inner journey from unhappy baby engineer to explorer. Since quitting his cubicle-based day job 15 years ago, Kirkby has trekked Mongolia on horseback, cycled Pakistan's Karakoram Highway, rafted Africa’s Blue Nile Gorge, walked across Iceland, summitted Denali (twice), supported the 1997 Canadian expedition to Mt. Everest, and crossed Arabia's Empty Quarter on foot and camel (recounted in Sand Dance.)

Kirkby sent me Sand Dance after our interview and I read it in one sitting this last weekend. It's exciting to find a new author as engaging as Kirkby and I can't wait for his next book. It may be awhile, he says, because Kirkby is off to explore surfer culture. Here is his site.

graeme gibson's flights of fancy

Graeme Gibson was in town yesterday with his new book, The Bedside Book of Birds: an Avian Miscellany. The acclaimed author of Communion, Perpetual Motion and Gentleman Death (and spouse of Margaret Atwood), talked to me over calamari and Glenmorangie at my favorite haunt, Victoria's. We have a shared interest in parrots - I have a cockatoo, he once had an Amazon parrot - so more than an hour and a half didn't seem nearly enough time to talk about his gorgeous book and all things avian.

"Humans developed as a species in a world full of birds," writes Gibson in his forward.

This book . . . isn't so much about birds themselves as it is about the richly varied and sometimes very intimate relationships that we have established with them during the hundreds of thousands of years that we and they have shared life on earth."

The Bedside Book of Birds is a richly textured mix of illustration, prose and poetry that is uplifting, thought-provoking and sometimes a little dark. Perfect not only for bird fanciers but for fans of literate writing. I read it cover-to-cover but recommend keeping it someplace central, so you can dip into it whenever the fancy strikes.

mild-manner lawyer doubles as globe trotting mystery writer

lunched yesterday with the guru of oil and gas law, John Ballem. What's interesting about that, you ask? Well, Ballem also writes popular crime thrillers, 12 of them, to be precise. His latest, The Oil Patch Quartet, is an omnibus of his previously published The Barons, The Devil's Lighter, Oilpatch Empire and Death Spiral.

Although somewhat dated - The Devil's Lighter was written in the '50s and the female love interest drives a Rambler - the plots hold up. I know this because I read the first 50 pages and woke up two days, and 751 pages, later.

But what makes the 70-something Ballem so interesting is what he does with the rest of his life. Having done a pre-interview Google search, which yielded nothing more interesting than Ballem's interest in horses and service as a Navy pilot, I was gobsmacked to find that he has been to the North Pole and Antarctica (and plans to return south next year). Ballem was one of the key players in early Calgary Zoo years and made wildlife films in Africa, where he spent time with Louis Leakey. He drives a vintage Corvette and a Jag now, but his story (in The Devil's Lighter) of an engineer who's truck breaks down in the bitter Arctic cold, thus exposing said driver to certain death by freezing, was written from experience.

If you live in Alberta or Texas, or have an interest in oil and gas history, The Oil Patch Quartet is for you. If not, check out Manchineel (set in the Caribbean) or Murder as a Fine Art (set in the Rockies).

yay david bergin!

congratulations David Bergin! He won the 2005 Scotiabank Giller Prize for The Time In Between. Hoping to get my interview with Bergin up soon . . .

Friendly Fire tragic but a page turner

coffeed today with National Post reporter Michael Friscolanti. His book, Friendly Fire, is the story of the 2002 bombing of Canadian troops by an American F-16 pilot in Afghanistan. Friscolanti covered the story from day two and writes a flagrantly unbiased account of the incident/accident/tragedy. He uses the results of more than 100 personal interviews and boxes of classified documents to let the players tell the story in their own words.

The result of Friscolanti's even-handedness is that I still can't decide if Major Harry Schmidt, who dropped the 500-pound, laser-guided bomb, is a victim or a murderer. I lean toward murderer (what part of "hold fire" did he not understand?) but you should read it and make up your own mind.

The first half of Friendly Fire is so gripping that, even though I knew what happened and who died, I couldn't put it down. This is journalism as it should be. Friscolanti shows every player warts and all, unspins the details, and lets the reader decide.

fascinated by victorians

interviewing Ken McGoogan (Lady Franklin's Revenge) the other day piqued my interest in Victorian life. History has always lacked detail for me. Sure, there are billions of books on every nuance of the world's big battles, but what about daily life? I always want to know what people ate, how they shopped or, for that matter, how they went to the bathroom.

McGoogan kindly highlighted for me some of the books in his bibliography and last week I ordered Judith Flanders' The Victorian House through abebooks.com. Subtitled "Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed" the London (England) Daily Telegraph said, it's "a fat, fascinating and fact-filled exploration of Victorian domestic life." I'm just into the second chapter and agree completely.

if a non-fiction book interests you, make a point of reading the bibliography or acknowledgements - you never know what interesting things you will find.

still moved by the last great war

lunched yesterday with Blake Heathcote, founder of the Testaments of Honour project. The project is recording, on digital video, the personal histories of Canadian veterans and has just published A Soldier’s View: the Personal Photographs of Canadians at War, 1939-1945.

A Soldier's View is a powerful collection of war photographs from the albums of veterans from all theatres of war; men and women in the navy, in the air force, in the army. With only brief introductions to each chapter, Heathcote has let the photos speak for themselves.

in his forward, artist Alex Colville wonders why we are still interested in events that happened 60 years ago. Heathcote and I pondered that question and discussed not only the grief of war, but the sadness of chronicling (and developing relationships with) aging veterans.

to read more about the Testaments of Honour project while breathlessly awaiting my author interview, go here.

the most frightening books

it's Halloween, the trick or treaters have gone home and I am thinking of the most frightening books I have ever read:

The Mist", Stephen King (in Skeleton Crew)
Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin
The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty

Stephen King's short story/novella, The Mist, is far and away the scariest reading experience of my life. An unworldly fog traps a group of strangers in a supermarket while nightmarish creatures lurk just outside the plate glass windows. Director Frank Darabont (Secret Window) will helm the movie set to start shooting later this year. He told Fangoria magazine:

"The Mist is a very scary and memorable story. One of Steve’s best ‘muscular’ short pieces, with characters in the kind of pressure-cooker environment that nobody writes as well as King."

The Mist is so good that it is just as unnerving on subsequent readings. It still creeps me out. You can download a clip from the audio book here.

I read The Exorcist when it came out in paperback in 1972 and later discovered Rosemary's Baby. I was nine in 1972 but my mom was reading The Exorcist so I did too. Both books were horrifying when I first read them and, although I don't find them quite so viscerally scary now, they remain deeply chilling.

pierre berton lives on

went to the launch last night of For the Love of History, a collection of pieces from the first 10 recipients of the Pierre Berton Award for History, including Charlotte Gray, Peter C. Newman and Patrick Watson. I normally avoid book launches ('cause I'm shy) but couldn't miss this one, if only for the chance to see the inimitable Will Ferguson (Hitching Rides With Buddha), winner of the 2005 award. Will has been called "Pierre Berton with attitude" which, as Will himself says, is odd because Berton had loads of attitude.

I also went to the launch because I crossed my heart and promised Elsa Franklin I would go. She was Pierre Berton's business partner for 42 years and was the driving force behind For the Love of History and Canada Moves West. Ms. Franklin is a force of nature and I would do anything for her.

Newly published by Fifth House, Canada Moves West is an omnibus of Berton's previously published YA books, The Railway Pathfinders, The Men in Sheepskin Coats, A Prairie Nightmare, Steel Across the Plains and Steel Across the Shield. Forget the young adult designation, it's a rousing read and shows that Canadian history is (was?) anything but boring.

the camera never blinks

Janis Kraulis is a quiet man, until you get him talking about the nature of photography and art. We coffeed today over his newest collection of landscapes, Grand Landscapes of Canada.

Kraulis has traveled the world for more than 20 years and his photos have been in dozens of books and magazines. He is known for capturing landscapes at the precise instant that they are extraordinary. In his words, these photos document a "moment in time".

watch for the author interview because when I write this up it will largely be just transcribing the tape. Kraulis is one of those erudite people who speak not only in sentences, but in paragraphs.

now I understand nanotechnology (sort of)

just had the most interesting afternoon. First I talked to Ted Sargent about his book, The Dance of Molecules, then had coffee with John Ibbitson about his book, The Polite Revolution.

Ted Sargent (who looks, btw, like he's about 25) is one of those rare scientists who can explain really complex stuff to the average person. The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives is one of those books I would not normally pick up. Sargent, however, explores the potential for nanotechnology in health, environment and information in a way that's funny, engaging and a pleasure to read. The 30-something scientist is a visiting professor of nanotechnology at MIT and lives in Toronto. Here is his site.

While Sir Wilfrid Laurier proclaimed that the 20th century belonged to Canada, John Ibbitson says that

a century from now, historians and anthropologists will cite Canada as the harbinger of a new age."

In The Polite Revolution: Perfecting the Canadian Dream, the Globe and Mail columnist dismantles the old ways of thinking about Canada’s immigration, free trade, social, and defence policies. I may not agree with all of his ideas (Canadian history is not boring!) but there is no refuting that Ibbitson is fascinating to read and talk to.

As usual, these will be up on the author interviews page just as soon as I can get them done.

more arctic angst

it's funny how these things work. The other day I interviewed Ken McGoogan on his book, Lady Franklin's Revenge. Today I had a great talk with Stephen Heighton about his novel, afterlands. How is that funny you ask? Well, afterlands is the fictional account of the survivors of the 1871 Polaris Expedition who spent six months marooned on a steadily-crumbling ice floe in the Arctic and faced madness, murder and other grisly things. The captain of the Polaris, Charles Hall, had first gone to the Arctic in 1860 in search of, that's right, Sir John Franklin.

Heighton's first novel, The Shadow Boxer, made a big splash and his collection of poetry, The Ecstasy of Skeptics, was shortlisted for a Governor General's award. He is fascinating and we talked of human frailty, a really horrible bear scene and Hollywood movies.

rosa parks gets off the bus

Civil rights icon Rosa Parks died last night in Detroit, Michigan. She was 92.

Parks has been called "mother of the civil rights movement" for the day in December 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system by blacks that was organized by Martin Luther King Jr. That boycott led to a court ruling desegregating public transportation in Montgomery and, eventually, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Given the lurking threat to our civil rights by some Homeland Security proposals, this might be a good time to read Park's autobiography, My Story. You can find used copies of it here.

steve martin wins the Mark Twain prize

Steve Martin has received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and this blog could not agree more. Forget the actor you know from The Jerk, LA Story or even Grand Canyon, it's Martin's writing that's brilliant. Cruel Shoes, a collection of short stories, is one of my top 10 favorite books of all time. He also wrote Picasso at the Lapin Agile (play), Pure Drivel (essays) and the novel Shopgirl, which became a movie starring Claire Danes.

this isn't Martin's first award for writing - he won the coveted Writers Guild award for his Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired screenplay, Roxanne.

I'm very proud to be a writer," Martin said. "I'm not trying to run away from 'comedian.' I love that. It's like the big umbrella of labels for me."

to hear Martin read the title story from Cruel Shoes, go here.

the magnificent Lady Franklin

talked today with Ken McGoogan about his new book, Lady Franklin's Revenge: A True Story of Ambition, Obsession, and the Remaking of Arctic History. Lady Jane Franklin has long been known as the striving woman behind the tragic (and hapless) Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin. McGoogan has written, as far as I know, the only in depth biography of Lady Jane and shows her for the "magnificant creature" she was.

I first met McGoogan a few years ago when he was promoting Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin (he likes long titles). Lady Franklin, says McGoogan, is the second in an Arctic trilogy, however, he is keeping his third subject a secret. In the meantime, here is his site. Check out the interactive map of Lady Franklin's Mediterranean.

Neil Young Nation is only okay

just finished Neil Young Nation, by Kevin Chong, and am completely underwhelmed. In 2004 Chong and three buddies retraced Young's 1966 journey from Toronto to Los Angeles. The subsequent book is subtitled "A quest, an obsession and a true story".

Chong's accounts of being on the road are fabulously funny and often insightful. Unfortunately there is not enough road and entirely too much Neil Young. Don't get me wrong, I have loved the tuneless Mr. Young for years, but pages of analysis of his songs weigh down Chong's celebration of Young as an icon. Chong quotes Young's lyrics extensively, only to show that Young is just not that deep.

What could have been a rollicking road book ends up, despite glimmers of brilliance, as tedious as driving to Yellowstone with your parents - you may be going someplace interesting, but you've tuned out after the second hour.

you could put an eye out with that

coffeed yesterday with Sherraine MacKay, Canada's top women's epee fencer and first Canadian World Championship medalist. MacKay's new book, Running With Swords, is a marvelous, hilarious memoir of her journey through the fencing world. MacKay is not only a talented athlete but a born writer. We talk of swordplay, her novel-in-progress, living a pauper's life in a Paris garret and her current life in Budapest. Here is her site.

also had a long talk with Richard Cannings, author of The Rockies: A Natural History. Published by Greystone Books and the David Suzuki Foundation, The Rockies is one of the few books looking at the range in its entirety - from northern BC to Mexico. Sure, it's got pretty pictures but it's also a good read.

time's top 100 novels

the intrepid people at Time (critics Richard Lacayo and Lev Grossman) have come up with their favorite 100 novels published since that magazine debuted in 1923. What brave men these must be to stand in the line of fire of millions of readers around the world, angry that Harry Potter or Hercule Poirot have been left off THE LIST. Says Lacayo:

Lists like this one have two purposes. One is to instruct. The other of course is to enrage. We're bracing ourselves for the e-mails that start out: "You moron! You pathetic bourgeoise insect! How could you have left off...(insert title here)." We say Mrs. Dalloway. You say Mrs. Bridge. We say Naked Lunch. You say Breakfast at Tiffanys. Let's call the whole thing off? Just the opposite—bring it on."

Here are some of my favorites.

All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien
Atonement, Ian McEwan
Beloved, Toni Morrison
The Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell
Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
Light in August, William Faulkner
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
1984, George Orwell
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski
A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Under the Net, Iris Murdoch
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

For the rest of THE LIST, see the Time site, which also has links to all the original reviews.

governor general's awards

the Canada Council for the Arts has announced the finalists for the 2005 Governor General’s Literary Awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children’s literature and translation.

Fiction
Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road, Viking Canada
Golda Fried, Nellcott Is My Darling, Coach House Books
Charlotte Gill, Ladykiller, Thomas Allen
David Gilmour, A Perfect Night to Go to China, Thomas Allen
Kathy Page, Alphabet, McArthur & Company / Weidenfeld & Nicholson

Nonfiction
Ted Bishop, Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books, Viking Canada
Michael Mitchell, The Molly Fire, ECW Press
Edward Shorter, Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire, University of Toronto Press
John Vaillant, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed, Knopf Canada
Jessica Warner, The Incendiary: The Misadventures of John the Painter, First Modern Terrorist, McClelland & Stewart

For more info on the other categories, as well as French nominees, the site is here. The awards are worth $15,000 each and will be announced Nov. 16, then presented by Canada's Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, in Ottawa on the 23rd.

Says Canada Council Chair and ballet legend Karen Kain:

These awards are about honouring great books, but they are also about encouraging Canadians of all ages to explore and discover the pleasure of reading. We want people in every part of the country to know about these books and the outstanding authors, illustrators and translators who created them.”