Who's Reading What

Issue 112: Travellers In A Strange Land

A voyeuristic peek into the bedside reading habits of the literary-minded contributors, editors, and board members of TNQ, CanLit journal extraordinaire.

Our Story BeginsMARK ROGERS "Bloemgracht"

I've been lucky this year: three books that got to me thoroughly--while I was reading them, and for a long time after.

Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers. I thought McEwan was getting better each time out, until I'd read this early novel/novella that I'd somehow missed the first time around. It's claustrophobic, it's tautly controlled. The final chapter made me sick with concern as it unfolded.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road. A father and son walk across ashy, hopeless post-apocolyptic America. What's not to love?

However, the real gem this year is Tobias Wolff's "Our Story Begins." Thirty-one short stories, many of them classics, and not a dud in there. Picking a favourite is like trying to decide on the best album by The Beatles. If you've not read anything by him, you can find Hunters in the Snow online at classicshorts.com.

wildwood  ERLING FRIIS- BAASTAD "My Journey to the Exoplanets"

 I've noticed on my recent hikes over long-familiar Yukon trails, that I'm growing into the small picture. Glaciers and mountian peaks are now less main events than they are backdrops for oddly shaped twigs, colourful pebbles, seeds and lichen, and even a tiny spider hurrying through the autumn cold. Meanwhile, I've discovered two writers from a vastly different landscape with whom I can compare surprisingly similar notes. When reading from Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places, I feel like I am sharing a camping trip in Britain with an especially sharp-eyed, well-read, and articulate pal. And in this book, he introduced me to a friend and mentor of his, the late Roger Deakin, whose Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees, and Notes From Walnut Tree Farm are teaching me, in calm, deft prose, that it's possible to focus even more sharply on the ground right at my feet. After time spent in any of these three books, I'm more anchored to my own locale and moment, even serene.

PATRICIA ROBERTSON "Aiding and Abetting"

I'm currently reading Annabel Lyon's wonderfully poised and deeply intelligent novel The Golden Mean. So refreshing to find fiction that matters, that isn't merely hip, ironic, and quirky, and/or about someone's dysfunctional family. I'm also reading Karen Armstrong's Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time, having become very interested in Islam in general, and Sufism (the mystical branch of Islam) in particular. And, for something completely different, I'm reading the British writer Stephen Fry's funny, irreverent, alternative-history, sci-fi romp Making History. His protagonist, Michael Young, manages to alter 20th century history, with the best of intentions, and the most unexpected—and dire—results.

 

 

  PATRICK PILARSKI

Most recently, I finished, and throughouly enjoyed, Thomas Trofimuk's new novel, Waiting for Columbus (McClelland & Stewart, 2009). The book is explosive, a story within a story, a collection of unique and evocative layers. On the poetry front, I'm reading with wax by derek beaulieu (Coach House Books, 2003). Obituary of Light: The Sangan River Meditations (Leaf Press, 2009) by Susan Musgrave, and I'm in the process of re-reading Birding, or Desire by Don McKay (McClelland & Stewart, 1983). In fact, it seems like I'm constantly in the process of re-reading Birding, or Desire; I wouldn't stop if I could.

KIM JERNIGAN, TNQ Editor

I read Annabel Lyon's The Golden Mean, a birthday gift from one daughter, out loud en route to Halifax with the other daughter. The deal was, if I would read, she would drive, and I have to say, the book sped the miles. The story of the years Aristotle spent tutoring Alexander of Macedon (a.k.a. Alexander the Great) and his mentally challenged half-brother is a study in contrasts—the man of contemplation, and the man of action, the life of the mind and the life of the body, the place and practice of science, and the place and practice of the arts, the public realm and the private. There is lots of action—military and sexual, it being the ancient Greeks—but the domestic scenes are what most moved and interested me. The book has been short-listed for the triple-crown of Canadian fiction—the Giller, the Governer General's Award, and the Rogers/Writer's Trust Fiction Prize. I think it is deserving. We didn't finish the book before we arrived in Halifax, so I had to swear mom's honour to put it back in Carey's hands as soon as I finished—not because she wanted to know what happened (that, as they say, is history) but because she had come to care about the characters and the choices they made.

 

FebruaryLong time New Quarterly reader MARY ERTEL sent us her review of Lisa Moore's forthcoming novel, February. Mary first discovered Lisa Moore in the pages of TNQ.

Lisa Moore has graced up with a gripping new novel, February. Her story revolves around the sinking of an oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland. She has struck the proper balance of tragedy, realism, courage, and (the element I always look for) a dash of romance. It's a book I found hard to put down.

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