Plain words, uncommon sense
Find a participating store at
http://www.freecomicbookday.com/
What’s Free Comic Book Day?
Free Comic Book Day is a single day when participating comic book shops give away comic books absolutely free to anyone who comes into their stores.
Where was this day when I was a kid!
Remember it’s not what you read but that you read. Now go get your comic.
UPDATE: In my excitement I forgot to mention that the Canuck Librarian is the cool source of this info.
I posted previously about the two Vancouver folks doing the 100-Mile Diet. Well now there’s a book coming, but, in the meantime, check out the website. I love the design.
http://100milediet.org/
Learn about eating locally. Get started on your own “eat local” diet. Tell your stories. Find your 100 miles.
It’s a cool site.
And it’s true, you can live in places where it’s harder to eat locally. The point is to think about your food. To think about how far its travelled. The average North American meal travels at least 1,500 miles from farm to plate.
I do believe that lots of small changes can help make big change. So if you’re in Prince George or Winnipeg in the winter … maybe chosing grapes from California is better than grapes from New Zealand. Or maybe you buy a bunch of cheap, end of harvest berries in the fall, freeze them and eat them over the winter instead of those grapes. I don’t know. You have to find what works for you.
I was talking to Roland Tanglao tonight about tap dance and here’s the update on cheap and incredible tap dance in Vancouver this month according to WestCoastTapDance.com.
CELEBRATE NATIONAL TAP DANCE DAY
TAP TO IT — 4th Annual Tap Dance Day Celebration
Vancouver East Cultural Centre, 1895 Venables Street, Vancouver, BC
May 28, 2006, 2 pm and 7 pm shows.
Tickets can be purchase through Ticketmaster.
Matinee, 2 pm show
$19 regular admission
$14 students & seniors
Evening, 7 pm show
$24 show & gala
*** Partial proceeds to benefit the Pacific Parkinsons Research Institute.
—————–
LIBRARY TAP PERFORMANCE
TAP TALK: Legends of Canadian Tap Dance
Co-hosted by the West Coast Tap Dance Collective and the Arts & History Division of the Vancouver Central Library
Description: This hour-long presentation on Canadian Tap Dance includes lecture, video and live performance. It highlights the careers of 3 legends in Canadian tap dance: Heather Cornell, William Orlowski and Dr. Jeni LeGon. Information about our local Vancouver tap scene will be shared and audience members will be treated to a live performance by VancouverÃs Urban Tap Squad.
Details: Saturday, May 27 at 3:00 in the Alice McKay room, Vancouver Central Library — 350 W. Georgia.
—————–
MOVING PICTURES: Nancy Haver has illustrated a picture book featuring the career of tap dance legend Dr. Jeni LeGon.
What Tap Dancing’s All About
According to Dr. Jeni LeGon
by: Nancy Haver
32 Pages – Paperback
$28 + shipping from Tap Emporium
http://tapemporium.com/TapBooks/WhatTapDancingsAllAbout/index.html
Do you know Inspector Banks?
In February, McClelland & Stewart sent me a charming note about crime novelist Peter Robinson and his latest novel Piece of My Heart.
Now I’m not a mystery or crime reader. I don’t have any stuck-up, snobby feelings about mystery novels, I just associate mysteries with television series. I’m a huge fan of a certain Sherlock Holmes–Jeremy Brett.
I’m not sure why I’ve never taken to reading mysteries. Nevertheless, my contact at M&S assured those of us in the 100 Readers’ Club to take a chance: “I know some of you may be thinking that mysteries are not your cup of tea.” That was exactly what I was thinking, just at that very moment. But she continued to convince me.
Mr. Inspector has been sitting on my bedside table for some time now. I’ve been reading a shocking amount lately and just couldn’t get to him. But now, Quill & Quire is in on the gig to convince Canadians that they shouldn’t pass up Inspector Banks.
Quill says that Robinson is an international superstar. He’s a bestseller in Sweden, France, Italy–he’s made the New York Times bestseller list and the Sunday Times bestseller list. He’s also Canadian, formerly of Yorkshire but he moved to Canada in 1974 to study creative writing under Joyce Carol Oates at the University of Windsor. That last bit is what really sold me on Robinson. I’m not sure why those things seem important to me, but as one not familiar with mystery writers, the familiarity of names such as Oates and that Robinson lives in Canada make me more keen to open the book.
The name dropping that truly closed the “sale” for me was Otto Penzler. Otto is a well-known New York bookseller and editor. He is the crime guy as far as I’m concerned. And according to Quill, Robinson is working on a short story for an Otto Penzler anthology.
I get it. This guy is going to be great. Inspector Banks is going to be great. Here I go to read my first mystery novel.
About Piece of My Heart
There are two parallel stories: the murder of a young woman at an outdoor concert in Yorkshire in 1969 and the present-day murder of a freelance music journalist, who was working on a feature about the Mad Hatters, a fictional band inspired by Pink Floyd.
I’ll let you know how it all turns out. If you’ve read an Inspector Banks novel, fill me in on the details. I understand that Banks has aged through the series and I’d like the juicy background details.
Over at Book Lust I read a post that Patricia did for Drawn.ca on Mark Haddon book design, in particular his multiple designs for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which I enjoyed very much.
Today I was in Duthie Books and spotted on the counter a copy of Hadden’s poetry collection. What you can’t tell from the cover image on Amazon is that there is a scroll wheel on the side and you can turn it to reveal little images and the book title in the cutout windows. Unlike The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, this book cover is not designed by Haddon, but it is beautiful nonetheless. Congratulations to designer Peter Mendelsund.
The design shows this is clearly book as objet d’art. I fell for it immediately.
There are very few poetry books I’ve ever bought but the ones I have are all little pieces of art.
This afternoon I attended a recording for the CBC Studio One Book Club. The guest author this week was Anosh Irani [seen in the photo with Sheryl MacKay in CBC Studio One]. Anosh published his first novel with Raincoast Books, The Cripple and His Talismans.
I was completely hooked on his writing the first time I read the novel, then I happened to get tickets to his play The Matka King, which was put on by the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver. What impresses me about Anosh is his ear for dialogue. The dialogue in his novels is especially engaging. It is witty and sarcastic and there’s a beautiful flow between the narrative and the dialogue. It’s not like some books where the dialogue seems completely structured.
Reading The Cripple and HIs Talismans was like reading an Indian Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A sense of doom hangs in the story, but it is mixed with strangely magical moments. There are passages in the book that are still vivid in my imagination. Magical realism from Bombay.
Anosh mentioned in the book club today that his new book is more realistic whereas The Cripple was more surreal. In an interview with John Burns in The Georgia Straight Anosh said that he’s looking to create a series of stories about Bombay that each reveal a different side to the city.
It was certainly clear today listening to Anosh speak about his childhood, his parents, moving to Vancouver and his writing, that there are many more stories to come. This is one author who is definitely on my radar. His new play, Bombay Black, is being produced in Toronto by Cahoots Theatre. If you have the chance to go, please let me know how it is. I’m hoping that the Arts Club puts it on here in Vancouver.
More about Anosh Irani’s The Song of Kahunsha
The Song of Kahunsha is set in Bombay in 1993 at the time of the violent clashes between the Muslims and Hindus. Ten-year-old Chamdi has left his orphanage for the streets of Bombay. He’s searching for his long-lost father and has no hope in hell of finding him, yet he is a boy filled with hope. The novel is his struggle with his new friendships, the enemies on the street and his own dreams. You can read the reviews and descriptions on Amazon.ca.
Also check out The Cripple and His Talismans. A fantastic read. And if you find it in hardcover, the design is beautiful. It is red cloth over board with embossed symbols on the cover.
More about CBC Studio One Book Club
Always enjoyable to see how the radio works. You can be an audience member by entering the CBC online contests to win a seat. Usually you have to write a snippet on why you want to attend. May 7 is David Suzuki. Watch for details on http://www.cbc.ca/bc/bookclub/. The book club is hosted by Sheryl MacKay of CBC Radio and John Burns of the Georgia Straight, and is recorded for broadcast on North by Northwest and other CBC Radio programs. Anosh’s recording should be on next weekend.
Magpie and Cake blogged recently about the The Essence of Rabbit. I’m a particular fan of the cartoon bunny. In fact my pet name for my mom is Rabbit.
Quote: No other living creature features as heavily in contemporary character design and art as the humble hare. But what exactly makes bunnies so irresistible to artists, designers and illustrators worldwide? Depending on the viewersà cultural context rabbits can symbolise anything from insanity, alertness, defencelessness, all the way to promiscuity, magic powers and utter innocence. By condensing the endless variations of the rabbit motif into one ultimate system – a perfect bunny mandala – the true nature of the beast emerges: the eternal essence of rabbit.
Over 1,500 bunnies.
CBC has a subsection on their website, CBC.ca/wordsatlarge. I discovered it in the intro section of my daily headlines email. I like receiving the CBC Headlines email because sometimes I miss the morning news on the radio.
The subsite has some interesting content on literacy, bestsellers and a blog. But there doesn’t appear to be a RSS feed for the blog so perhaps it’s just labelled a blog. I read almost everything in a RSS Reader so it’s unlikely that this subsection will be a regular visit for me. What about you? How do you read blogs: visiting the actual blog pages or reading things in a Reader?
Bud Parr, of MetaxuCafe, sent me an email about an exciting week long writing series they are doing about the Pen World Voices Festival of International Literature. There’s a write-up on the Orhan Pamuk and Margaret Atwood event. Orhan is a famous Turkish author. He was in my Lonely Planet, which I read extensively last September when James and I were travelling about Greece and Turkey.
Here’s the link to the MetaxuCafe post. Photos included.
More details from Parr: “In conjunction with the Words Without Borders blog, MetaxuCafe will be covering over 30 events this week and posting at MetaxuCafe and other places around the Web.”
Check it out at:
http://www.MetaxuCafe.com
Congratulations to Toronto’s Camilla Gibb, who won the 2006 Trillium Book Award for Sweetness in the Belly published by Doubleday Canada. The Trillium Book Award honours books written by Ontario authors, and the prize is $20,000. Not a bad prize amount.
Click for what Amazon.ca says about the book.
My friend’s book club read it and enjoyed it very much, but I haven’t read it yet. I know it is a haunting novel set in Ethiopia. Anyone read it?
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