It’s Time To Get Your Guerrilla Gardener On

So, the first week of Spring has gone, not that it feels that much different from the week previous (the gabillionth week of winter). But here it is. And amazingly, even though there are no obvious signals in the physical environment (i.e. sunshine), I can feel it. I have been digging out closets and sorting through papers – bitten by some kind of Spring cleaning bug – I am even thinking about what to plant on my wee little back deck garden (and other places around town). Read more

When Durbach Met Chaplin

Anyone who has ever met Robert Chaplin knows that when I describe him as a delightfully eccentric and multi-talented artist that I am understating on both counts. If you can keep up with him, I guarantee that any opportunity to engage in conversation with Robert will land you somewhere you have never been.

In my mind, this is what must have happened when Robert met chef Andrey Durbach: I picture Robert sitting at a corner table with a dinner crowd buzzing around him. After eating his meal, Robert somehow gains an audience with the chef. Caught off guard by Robert (and his unbridled enthusiasm), Durbach enters in to a passionate conversation about food and – wham – the next thing he knew, there he was, fixing a big pot of chicken soup for a crowd of people who have come to celebrate the launch of a cookbook for kids at Barbara-Jo’s.

I don’t know how it actually went down, the important thing is – it went down, and it was good.

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Delicious Chicken Soup | Find it at Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks

One book. One recipe. A chicken soup recipe from Vancouver Chef Andrey Durbach (Parkside, La Buca, and Pied-à-Terre) paired with artwork and book design by local artist Robert Chaplin. A simple idea executed perfectly. This book is wonderful for both kids and grown-ups. It slows you down, makes you giggle and teaches you how to make a really nice chicken soup. Best 20 bucks you’ll ever spend on a chicken soup book.

Books: Bad Gods, Cake & Flames

Autobiographical essays, anecdotes, and the doings of devious demi-deities

I Was Told There’d Be Cake

by Sloane Crosley

Available at Chapters/Indigo | A collection of hilarious biographical essays. I am staring at the back cover as it sits on my desk next to my morning tea and this is what it says: “From accidentally despoiling an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, siccing the cops on the wrong neighbor, Sloane Crosley can do no right, despite the best of intentions – or perhaps because of them. In a sharp, original storytelling style that confounds expectations at every turn, Crosley recounts her victories and catastrophes with an irresistible voice that is all her own, finding genuine insights in the most unpredictable places.” Think Gossip Girl – only intelligent, witty, and down to earth. No – Think David Sedaris, only younger, poorer, femaler, and straight.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

by David Sedaris

Available at Duthie Books on Fourth Ave | This, the latest work by the author of the hilarious Me Talk Pretty One Day and the just as funny Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, is another page to page winner. Everyone has someone on their Christmas list who will appreciate a little bit of David Sedaris. Some, of course, would enjoy a lot of Sedaris. I’ve heard it said that the tone of this book is more mature and slightly darker than his previous stuff. I would have to agree, but I do think darker and wiser wear very well on the author, making for a better read. Engulfed in Flames may well be the most enjoyable book that I have tucked into all year.

Gods Behaving Badly

by Marie Phillips

Available at Duthie Books on Fourth Ave | Not quite Homer – but thoroughly entertaining nonetheless. The adventures and misadventures of Greek gods slumming it in modern day London. Life in contemporary UK is rough for a slough of aging Greek gods who share a run down flat and struggle to hold on to their fading powers. Did you ever think you would see Artemis (the huntress) stooping to become a dog walker and Aphrodite (goddess of love) earning a living as an operator for a telephone sex line? Me neither. It’s a clever concept and a very funny read.

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Books: A Year of Mornings

A Year of Mornings | by Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes
Princeton Architectural Press

Almost two years ago, two women at opposite ends of a country took a photograph. Both women then loaded their photo on to Flickr and immediately noticed a similarity between their images (everyday objects randomly arranged on a kitchen table). One thing led to another and the two women came up with the idea to document their mornings by uploading one photograph per day to a shared blog called 3,191: a Year of Mornings (the women live 3,191 miles apart).

I have happily become lost in the caverns of the 3,191 site for long spells of my own mornings. Apparently, I’m not the only one, as this spontaneous collaborative project has now attracted an international following, including the Princeton Architectural Press and Martha Stewart.

PAP has collected 236 of these photographs – a bowl of granola alone on the table, rainboots kicked off in a quiet hallway, random books on an unmade bed – and put together a beautiful little book.

You should be able to buy it at Chapters/Indigo for under 20 bucks. It’s very Christmas-giftable.

Books: Death With Interruptions

My lifestyle no longer affords me the luxury to devour books the way I once did. It took me a long time to accept this. Being a librarian – a ‘book’ person – and all, I kept reaching for the prize winners – thick volumes bound in hardcover. I would lug them home and cart them around. Seldom, however, would I finish them. I’d blame long hours at work, a crazy home life, late nights at the disco, but it doesn’t really matter ‘why’. The important thing is that I’m through pretending. The days and nights of unfinished books sitting at my bedside collecting dust are done. I now judge a book by its cover (and by its word count).

Death With Interruptions
By José Saramago. Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa.

Books on the “new book shelf” have little stickers on their front cover to remind me of that pesky two week loan period (regular loan periods offer a much more accommodating 21 – 28 days). I try to avoid them, but their clever art work frequently sucks me in. On this day I had an appetite for something of substance and Jose Saramago, Nobel Prize winner and author of Blindness (recently made in to a movie starring Julianne Moore) spoke to me with a slim little 256 page novel.

What’s the story?

Ever had one of those days when you get to work and think: “Why am I doing this?” Maybe you’ve even thought about leaving it all behind or found yourself daydreaming about how great it would be to take things slow for a little while. You know – reflect, catch up with friends, go to the gym – that sort of thing. Sound at all familiar? Of course it does. We’ve all had days like that.

In a cold uninspired room, surrounded by towers of paperwork with nothing but a scythe for company, Death – who happens to be a woman – is having one of those days, only she does something about it:

On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This of course causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration—flags are hung out on balconies, people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home families are left to care for the permanently dying, life-insurance policies become meaningless, and funeral parlors are reduced to arranging burials for pet dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots. (publishers description)

Not quite a cheery pick-me-up of a book, but I didn’t put it down feeling any more depressed by the emptiness of organized religion, insurance companies, medical systems or politicians than I was going in, either. The concept alone is clever enough and Saramago, a great satirist, had me chuckling to myself over and over.

Final analysis: highly recommended, even if you do have time and energy to read a thicker one.

Joseph Boyden Wins Giller Prize

Good Score! Joseph Boyden (wiki), author of Three Day Road, has won the $50,000 Giller prize for his newest novel, Through Black Spruce. Via CTV News:

Competing against Boyden were Rawi Hage for “Cockroach,” Mary Swan for “The Boys in the Trees,” Anthony De Sa for “Barnacle Love” and Marina Endicott for “Good to a Fault.”

But Boyden’s poetic portrait of contemporary aboriginal life and that culture’s urban-rural divide most impressed this year’s judging panel.

“We always hear about the diabetes and the suicide rates among Canada’s Native peoples. But there is such a beauty in them – and in the land. I wanted to get that across to people in this book,” Boyden told CTV.ca.

As Annie, one of the book’s characters points out, the Cree inhabitants living within Boyden’s fictional book have “gone from living on the land … hunting, trapping, trading in order to survive, to living in clapboard houses and pushing squeaky grocery carts up and down aisles filled with overpriced and unhealthy food.” They have, as Annie ironically puts it, become “civilized.”

“I am very happy to speak for a people in my own way who often don’t have their own voice,” Boyden told O’Regan.

More on the Giller Prize here.

“The Journal As Art” And More

Drawing From Life: The Journal as Art

by Jennifer New

“Jennifer New takes readers on a spirited tour into the private worlds of journal keepers an architect, a traveler, a film director, an archeologist, a cancer patient, a songwriter, a quiltmaker, a gardener, an artist, a cyclist, and a scientist, to name just a few illustrating a broad range of journaling styles and techniques that in the end show how each of us can go about documenting our everyday lives. Excerpts from journals by such artists as Maira Kalman, Steven Holl, David Byrne, and Mike Figgis give us a peek at how creative souls observe, reflect, and explore.”

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–And How It Can Renew America

by Thomas L. Friedman

David Suzuki is reading this right now – do you really need more to go on?

Put simply: Hot, Flat, and Crowded explains how the world wide increase of the middle class combined with a growing global energy crisis has landed us in a situation where we are desperately in need of an energy solution. More doom and gloom? Not really. And that is the great thing about this author: he has hope! Friedman talks about the need for cooperation and innovation. He points out that the fossil-fuel age will end only when we invent our way out of it.

Real Food: What to Eat and Why

Nina Planck

Plancks assessment of what to eat and why comes from a compelling cross referencing of scientific evidence and folk wisdom. Using her own life experience (Planck was raised on farm food but abandoned this ‘food philosophy’ for vegetarianism in college), the author illustrates why the foods we love (animal protein, butter, eggs, milk, dark chocolate) are good for us. Nina Planck knows where of she speaks, she is responsible for the creation of farmers’ markets in London and Washington D.C. and ran New York City’s famous Greenmarket. Just looking at the book cover makes my mouth water.

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All suggested titles above are linked to Advance Book Exchange (ABE). ABE is an Internet-based mail-order service for out-of-print books, used, rare and antiquarian books. ABE is a local business. Give them a try. Buy second hand… or better yet – visit your local library. READ FOR FREE!

Bibliophile’s Notebook #253

Are you a closet book wonk with bibliomaniacal tendencies? Score! Nicholas Basbanes is coming to town to give a free lecture at the Vancouver Planetarium on October 29th from 7:30pm to 8:30pm. This is the fellow who wrote A Gentle Madness, a must-read for anyone with a passion for books and ephemera that detailed the weird and incurable sickness that is Bibiophilia. Even if (especially if) you’re a disinterested illiterate with problems sleeping, this might do you some good.

The Nicholas Basbanes Lectures
Free Lecture
Vancouver Planetarium, 1100 Chestnut Street, Auditorium
Wednesday, October 29th, 7:30 – 8:30 pm
Topic: The continuing importance of the book and reading in society: “Stirring the World: The Enduring Power of the Printed Word.”

From his bio:

Well known for writing about books, bibliophiles, and various aspects of book culture, Nicholas Basbanes has worked as an award-winning investigative reporter, a literary editor, a lecturer, and a nationally syndicated columnist. His first book, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction for 1995, and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It is now in its twentieth printing, with more than 120,000 copies in print.

Of his second book,Patience & Fortitude, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian David McCullough wrote that “Nicholas Basbanes has become our leading authority of books about books.” Of his fifth, Matthew Price wrote in the Los Angeles Times that “Every Book Its Reader reminds us that books, in all their myriad forms, are necessary equipment for living.”

Basbanes’ sixth book, Editions & Impressions.—a collection of his literary journalism over the past twenty years—was recently published by Fine Books Press, a division of Fine Books & Collections magazine. His seventh, A World of Letters: Yale University Press, 1908-2008, will be published by Yale University Press this fall. This past December, Basbanes was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in support of a book he is now writing on the history of paper and papermaking, to be published next year by Alfred A. Knopf.

See you there with glasses on, nerd.

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