The guys and gals of Google Book Search now have a blog:
http://booksearch.blogspot.com/
Page 105 of 125
Last week I was chatting with Lex about the tv show Lost. She’s just started watching the series and is now a bit of a fan. I’m also a fan, however, I have never seen a full episode. I did see the “Making of” special that was on last year and fell in love with the idea of the show. Now I’m really intrigued.
I read in Quill and Quire that Hyperion has published a novel by one of the characters on the show. It is a posthumous publication written by Oceanic Flight 815 casualty Gary Troup.
Quote: “Bad Twin, a tale about a set of twins – one bad, obviously – out to get Daddyís bucks, was found in manuscript form by the Lost characters on the hit ABC program. Viggo-esque man-hunk Josh ‘Sawyer’ Holloway is reading it on the show, according to a Guardian article, and is ‘anxious to finish it.'”
Just to clarify, this is a fictional work written by a fictional character who is dead in a fictional tv show–the book is a real physical object published by a real company. Nice blurring of lines between fact and fiction.
Intriguing? I think so especially from a marketing point of view.
There are a huge number of Lost fans who are looking for clues to the show. Lots of fan sites and speculation. Now there is a book. Cool cross-promo.
Here’s the link to the book on Amazon.ca.
On Friday I went to a preview of the Emily Carr Graduation Exhibition 2006. I only saw part of the show so I’d like to go back. I posted some photos on Flickr.com but I must say I wasn’t paying much attention to the artistic nature of my photos.
Things I like the most:
1. Walking sticks. There were all sorts of coloured walking sticks. You could select your stick and use it all around the exhibition. Some had little wheels on the bottom.
2. The Girl in the Moon. There was a huge wall with a purple background and a yellow circle. It looked like a moon to me. There was a yellow ladder and the artist was wearing a purple dress and painting little purple and yellow creatures on the wall.
3. The animations. There were a couple of short animated films that I loved. Tree for Two by Joel Furtado was the winner of the Electronic Arts Reveal 06 Canadian 3D animation showdown. It think his film was shorter than the title of the award he won. I was a fan of A Hamster Tail by Andrea Shimizu. The characters reminded me of the Moomins, which apparently no one in North America has heard of.
I want to go back and watch all the animations. JumpTrumpRumpBump looked really cool but I only watched the preview.
One of the things I didn’t like was that lots of the animations ripped off the circle of circles used in Bugs Bunny’s exit. Maybe that was a required element.
That’s all for now folks!
Here at Work Industries we’re a Mac shop. I’ve decided that I’m part of Work Industries because Work Industries has invaded my space. We can get along. It’s ok. It’s not like a “PC-Mac” getting along, which I’ll get to in a second.
I’ve always worked on Mac. We had a Mac in my grade 2 class. I remember playing “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.” Anyway, when we needed to buy a new computer in 2001, James was less than keen on buying a Mac. He was a PC guy.
The Reader’s Digest version of this story is that we bought a Mac Cube and Virtual PC (which we never used by the way).
Now the home office is kitted out with the Cube running OS Classic, Mac Mini OS X and our new baby iBook. If Apple is listening, I’m a fan. I would like an iBook in shiny black, 12″. I need portable and I want it black like the new video iPod.
What started this post is that over at Inkbase, Jason has linked to the new “Get a Mac” ads. I like all of them except the virus one. Don’t taunt the virus makers please.
http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/
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 Vancouverís 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.