Next Year’s Reading List

Well, I got to two of the titles on last year’s reading list, and a couple hundred books that weren’t. One was the brilliant Wind Up Bird Chronicle by H. Murakami. The next was not as fun, but even more eerie. I’m glad I made the effort to stick with a Cormac McCarthy. It wasn’t the one I’d meant to read- All the Pretty Horses, but one called Outer Dark. This was a dark masterpiece in every way. Few ever write about those people who are the lowest common denominator of society- it’s definitely an ‘ism’ of some kind to say what I just said. Cormac’s theme may seem salacious to some who pick it up for the incest taboo, but salacious it is not. This brother and sister couple are not exactly Hot and Ready. They have limited teeth, fewer reading skills, even fewer yet showers, and inbreeding has given them little in suitable reasoning skills. Deep in the Appalachians, where there are no birth certificates, these lowest echelon of humans don’t officially exist. McCarthy recreates Elliot’s Wasteland, in a sense, weaving themes of blindness, bleakness, sickness, namelessness, and isolation throughout. The many subtle and overt references to Biblical themes or stories in outer dark were not intended to show God’s presence here, but his absence.

I admit Cormac’s strange style both intrigued me and frightened me away. He is known for dense and endless sentences, for not using quotation marks, for bleak themes, and for language that demands you read with a dictionary nearby. Because the subject matter tended towards the far spectrum of masculine, I didn’t make that effort until now, though I grew more and more curious about the master literary stylist. It takes a bit of patience initially to find the difficult rhythm, and then it takes you. McCarthy is Hemingway’s heir, and a thousand times better a writer.

Leading my special list for next year’s must-reads is another book with an incest theme, but Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex promises to much more cheery. It won the Pulitzer Prize winner in 2003, and I’ve been meaning to read it ever since. I was intrigued- there are not many books where the narrator is a hermaphrodite, but apparently it’s not as rare as we think. They walk among us. They may even be us: apparently, a convincing apparatus does not guarantee that nothing else is going on with our indoor plumbing. Anyhow, so many colleagues have mentioned how funny and brilliant this one is that my first read of 2009 is definitely going to be a walk on the wild side.

Hermaphrodite, Paris by Rolando Cervantes Gómez

I’ve decided the theme for 2009’s list is going to be filled with ‘shoulds.’ Only the most devoted of my readers will recall that a few years ago I wrote a lament to reading, a rarity in my usual praise of literature. In it, I let go of the stress associated with the impossibility of reading everything good, and I removed all shoulds from my list. I opened myself up to read anything or nothing, to pick up pulpy detective stories or soft porn. It’s been wonderful and lovely and the variety has been delightful. But I’m determined next year to kick my gossip mag habit once and for all. And that will take a little discipline. Now, I’m not against the importance of the Braddy Bunch. I’ve written at length on how celebrity is a surrogate mythology, a modern pantheon. We need our Medusas and our Ulysses and our sirens and our Furies and our Narcissi. But enough is enough, and I don’t want to be standing guard, wondering if Any Winehouse is still alive, when I could be reading Giller after Giller instead.

The Scotiabank Giller Prize is the largest cash prize for literature in Canada, fifty grand given annually to the best fiction, either novel or short story collection. The annual black tie gala announcing the prize is the kind of literati/glitterati function I revile, but I understand that the pretensions of society life have nothing to do with authors. I’m also grateful to that same circle of Canada’s upper echelon for the trickle down effect they have on reading literature, for bringing bucks and publicity to any writer. Though it does seem that the winner is always predictably Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, or Margaret Atwood, this is only true half the time. This year, the winner is Joseph Boyden, for Through Black Spruce. I love a book that has unexpected twists and turns, and a sucker for ‘looking for identity’ plots. Boyden has Metis heritage, and writes about aboriginal characters. He studied creative writing at the University of New Orleans, and lives between the north and south- Northern Ontario, and Louisiana. Those are two of my favourite places, and I’m hoping the book reflects something of this idiosyncrasy.

Year after year, Life of Pi shows up on my reading list, and it’s not exempt yet, as a Man Booker winner. Why can’t I seem to get into this book, heralded as an innovative, unusual and thrilling story? I’ve had this book on my shelf now for years, and it’s getting lonely. I take it out on one date, then put it back. Yet every one who has read it is incredibly enthusiastic. We’ll give it another whirl.

Forms of Devotion by Diane Schoemperlen is a 1998 winner of the Governor General’s Prize. Fifteen years in the book industry and somehow I never heard of it. Setting up those prize tables sifted all kinds of titles and names into my unconscious, but not this one. A quick look through my GG options and I leapt for this one. It’s an anthology of illustrated short stories, by an author I don’t know. I’m sorry that the list of prizewinners through the last three decades yields little that piques my curiousity, though I’ve read many and remember few. The Diviners, of course, Margaret Laurence’s outstanding piece of Canadiana, changed my life. But too many on this list are the predictably tedious efforts of writers who have made it, trying way too hard. So shoot me for this sacrilege.

The Known World by Edward P. Jones is another that’s been on ‘the list’ for awhile, even though the list had been technically abolished. The Pulitzer winner in fiction for 2004, this is a story about a former slave and a powerful white man in Virginia. It’s only fair to read this year’s Pulitzer as well, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Here, Junot Diaz has managed to feature a sympathetic character in Oscar, a fat nerd. Weaving Dominican- American history with a family curse and some love, it promises to be something new for a change, and not those GG borefests I referred to above.

Six- that’s it. I’m making a reasonable list, so that I attend to it instead of tossing it. Besides, I have to save room for all the poetry I review, and Wally Lamb’s long awaited 700 page The Hour I First Believed. I am determined to throw in a few classics next year also, it’s been a while since I devoted any time to books on the academic’s lists. And I’ll need at least a few sneak peaks at the Who Wore What pages.

What Posh Really Looks Like

Dolly Parton’s Book of the Month Club

It makes perfect sense that Dolly Parton’s favourite kids’ book is The Little Engine That Could. Ms. Parton is herself an unstoppable train, who knows no limits as a musician, artist, fashionista, businesswoman and philanthropist. Her imagination is spectacular- did you know that one of the instruments Dolly used to accompany her vocals on smash hit Nine to Five was her acrylic fingernails?

It may appear that Dolly’s life is all rhinestones and glitter- she often jokes that “it costs a lot too look this cheap.” Most know that Dolly was raised dirt poor in a one room shack with a heap of youngin’s in the Smoky Mountains. And many know that Dolly created Dollywood to give her friends, cousins, and siblings decent work. Now how was it that I worked for a decade in the book industry/literacy/literature world and somehow didn’t hear about Dolly’s Imagination Library?

How’s this for a class act? If you are aged zero to five, Dolly Parton will mail you a book each and every month! The awesome literacy program, which Dolly spearheaded in her own community in 1996, has spread to more than 500 counties across North America. The first book each child receives is The Little Engine that Could, and then kids can eagerly await their monthly treasures, carefully selected by Dolly and a team of experts, and provided by Penguin Books.

Dolly funds the project herself, through proceeds from her cookbook, theme park, and donors, and through fundraising work for literacy. Head to www.imaginationlibrary.com to make a donation, or to get involved. Or, consider using Dolly’s inspiration and commit to some kind of book club for your niece, godchild, or an underprivileged neighbour. Perhaps you can take that time once a month to read the story to him or her- it would make a unique chance for him to learn a few reading skills and to see the doors that his imagination can open!

www.thegirlcanwrite.net

Lorette C. Luzajic