A riotously funny, emotionally raw New York Times bestselling novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind—whether we like it or not.
And a terrible motion picture. Read the book.
The death of Judd Foxman’s father is not a surprise but what is surprising is that his dying request is that his family sit shiva. The whole family shows up for seven days and nights, struggling to not kill each other. Judd’s two brothers and his sister, plus their partners and kids, have many secrets and grievances that are on full display.
To that end, it’s a very funny book about a dysfunctional family and all the ways they undermine any love they have for each other. They are certainly happy to see day seven roll around. But, like all books that become films, there is a happy(ish) ending.
Winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction
Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) is a playful read about grief and the lost of a good friend. Plante structures the novel as encyclopedia entries for a TV show called “Little Blue.” Little Blue is set on an isolated island and is a quirky program that is part Robinson Crusoe, part Corner Gas, part Curb Your Enthusiasm. It’s Vivian’s favourite show.
Vivian is the narrator’s friend who has passed away. Vivian is the narrator’s truest friend, the person who she first confided to about being queer, the friend who made life worth living because she was fun and vivacious Vivian!
Perfect read for fans of Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette.Little Blue is disarming, it’s social commentary, it’s emotive—all the feels—and multi-layered. Plante is experimenting, and that’s a notable reason to give this one a read.
Description: Macintyre’s real-life spy thriller is a slow start with a fast-paced finish. I loved it. The spy and traitor here is Oleg Gordievksy, a senior KGB officer who spies for MI6 from 1974 . That seems like an understatement. His secrets are priceless. And the book is full of name dropping to demonstrate the breadth of information Gordievsky shared and the impact on bringing the Cold War to its end.
Gordievsky advised Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, on Britain’s Cold War policies. He outted a number of spies and identified networks throughout Europe so those posing as diplomats were ejected. In the end, Gordievsky received the Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and Saint George from Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace where he was recognized for services to UK security.
The book is based on more than 140 hours of taped interviews with Oleg Gordievksy, who appears to have an infallible memory. Names like Putin and Aldrich Ames come up, and it’s easy to see how yesterday’s Russian playbook of fake news and mistrust are still unfolding today.
Favourite moment: Oleg is summoned back to Russia and fears that he has been exposed. The chapter “Cat and Mouse” opens with this:
In Moscow, Gordievsky checked the locks again, praying he might be mistaken. But no, the third lock, the dead bolt he never used and had no key for, had been turned. The KGB was on to him.
chapter 12, The spy & the traitor by ben mcintyre
Perfect read for fans of John Le Carré or In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. The Spy and the Traitor is full of ideologies, betrayal, and intrigue. The glorious days of the Cold War spy — harrowing.
The Glass Hotel is Emily St. John Mandel’s awaited novel. Her previous was Station Eleven, which won the Arthur C. Clark Award, the Toronto Book Award and was nominated for several others. Station Eleven was about a pandemic. The Glass Hotel is about the collapse of financial markets. Hm.
Station Eleven was genius. And I was holding my breath for The Glass Hotel. It’s so hard for an author to deliver one masterpiece after another. I love love love The Glass Hotel.
Description: Vincent is a bartender at a remote resort in Caiette, BC. The hotel is absolutely gorgeous, with a stunning glass lobby and restaurant that looks out at the ocean. This is where she meets the hotel’s owner Jonathan Alkaitis. Alkaitis works in finance and leaves Vincent with a $100 tip and a proposition that leads to her becoming his wife. Well, technically they are not married. Her job is to be young, beautiful, attentive. And she’s everything Jonathan needs her to be. He’s the ultimate scam artist and running a Ponzi scheme that collapses. He takes a lot of people down with him. But ultimately this is not a sad book, nor a suspenseful book. It’s really about what it’s like to lead alternate lives, or rather to recognize there are different realities to each life. That’s the part I loved.
Favourite moment: Everyone underestimates Vincent, the trophy wife. But she’s smart, knows she’s playing a role, and does it perfectly. There’s a moment when Jonathan’s daughter Claire has exposed his crimes.
When it did finally collapse, when he was finally trapped, the wrong woman was there with him. Although Vincent impressed him, at the end, despite not being Suzanne. The tableau: His office in Midtown, the last time he was ever in that room. He was sitting behind his desk, Claire crying on the sofa, Harvey staring into space, while Vincent fidgeted around with a coat and shopping bag and then sat and stared at him until he finally had to tell her: “Vincent,” he said, “do you know what a Ponzi scheme is?”
“Yes,” Vincent said.
Claire, from the sofa, still crying:”How do you know what a Ponzi scheme is, Vincent? Did he tell you? Did you know about this? I swear to god, if you knew about this, if he told you …”
“Of course he didn’t tell me,” Vincent said. “I know what a Ponzi scheme is because I’m not a fucking idiot.”
He thought, That’s my girl.
page 235, The Glass hotel
Perfect read for anyone who loved Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, or anything by Michael Lewis.
Need to revive a gel pen that stopped working? If your gel pen still has ink but it won’t come out then you can fix a dried out gel pen with this lifehack.
It’s super easy to revive gel pens. Just use a water dropper to add a drop or two of water to the ink. Lucky I have droppers from my perfume days. But you could use a leaky faucet! Next shake the pen and attempt to write.
If it doesn’t work, add another drop of water and try again.
Still not working? Blow into the ink. I only needed to do this for 1 pen but I managed to force out some ink, then the ball was rolling again and working.
For a super tricky pen, soak the entire pen in warm water for 5 minutes. I had to go all out to get my green mini gel pen working, but it’s awesome now.
The predictive manifesto is a very simple question of whether you want revolutionary ideas or nothing to change in your mind and your personal experience with edits. One day when you’re not alone with your own mind and don’t know what to expect from the rest of the digital revolution then go back to the public that you have been told to keep in touch with, the audience that you’re not sure of, the future of this particular issue, and consider how much you need to be seen by the same person as a whole other world and think of the social networking platforms that you can use to help them understand what you think of your life. You will need to make a decision on what the fuck is a collective imagination. Put that into a digital file. Can there be anything more complex than the same thing that happened in your life, with edits and a few other people who don’t know how to make a difference in the process of creating a culture industry, on purpose, to make a point about how much they value you? Can they find out if you’re willing to pay for publishing it, willing to create a new system for the future of this world or your own mind, when you’re not alone with your own time and energy and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and space and
My Publishing@SFU colleague Hannah McGregor had her PUB448 students create digital publishing manifestos. They had to do something creative with the relationship between form and content. This is the coolest: The Predictive Manifesto https://zvedova.wixsite.com/, which generated the above. I made minor edits to make it into a poem.
Description: I discovered this novel at Hagar Books, which always has a lovely display in the window. I loved the fun colours on the cover, I haven’t read many Iranian authors, and the book was published by Europa Editions–a publisher I recently discovered.
Azar’s writing reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree has that 100-Years-of-Solitude. It also reminds me of Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Azar’s writing is beautiful, the story is spellbinding yet sad, there’s a mystical element to the storytelling, and Azar has an interesting and playful voice.
I say it’s like Thien in that we are deep into the worst of Iran’s Islamic Republic Revolution. It’s hard to read about the grief of a family, young men hanged without trial, children killed in fire bombs. From Thien, I came to better understand China’s Cultural Revolution. From Azar, I got a good introduction to Persian storytelling and traditions. Plus the book is littered with literary quotes and references!
Favourite quote: I love the fairytale elements, the tricksy jinns, the sister who turns into a mermaid. The opening paragraph is reflective of the overall tone of the novel:
Beeta says that Mom attained enlightenment at exactly 2:35 P.M. on August 18, 1988, atop the grove’s tallest greengage plum tree on a hill overlooking all fifty-three village houses, to the sound of the scrubbing of pots and pans, a ruckus that pulled the grove out of its lethargy every afternoon. At that very moment, blindfolded and hands tied behind his back, Sohrab was hanged.
chapter 1
Perfect read for fans of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing.
Mark Haddon is probably best known for his bestseller The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which won 17 literary prizes and was made into an acclaimed stage play. I’m a Haddon fan. But I didn’t love this novel. Haddon’s recent works re-imagine myths and legends and turn them into contemporary stories. In this novel Darius and the yacht, the Porpoise, become Pericles, the prince of Tyre.
Description: The novel opens with a terrifying plane crash. I started reading this novel the week that Kobe Bryant’s plane went down and it was eerie. Then there is one violent moment after another as we weave between different versions of the Darius character across time. This is not a linear novel, many of the male characters are unlikeable, if not despicable.
The baby who survives the plane crash is raised by her wealthy, overprotective AND incestuous father. Yuck. She eventually starves herself to death. The Darius in this story is a potential suitor and saviour but he’s beaten almost to death by the father and escapes. Or maybe dies and in another universe because Pericles.
Pericles also loses his wife and daughter in a crash — this time it’s a ship. But actually they both survive, unbeknownst to him. There are a few lovely moments in the lives of these women when mythical beings save them, or they save themselves.
Basically this is a novel about shattered families. Asshole men. And women who are beaten down yet survive.
Favourite quote: Marina (daughter of Pericles) escapes her foster family (who were plotting to kill her) and she’s being hunted by soldiers. She’s already escaped her kidnapper / assassin.
She slides swiftly into a profound sleep in which she runs with a band of women across rolling grasslands, over hard, packed sand, through fine columns of leaf-light between trees. They turn into deer and she becomes a deer running with them. Their speed is thrilling, the earth spun to a blur by their hooves. Then they become a thousand arrows falling from the clear sky, into bark, into grass, into fur, into flesh. They are women and deer and arrows and this is no contradiction. They they are the wolves tearing into the flesh of the dying horse and tearing out the slippery liver and kidneys of the man who kidnapped her, and this is both terrifying and absolutely right, the way lightning is terrifying and absolutely right. They snap away the white ribs with their powerful jaws and yank out the lungs and she knows without question that this is precisely how he died.
The Porpoise by Mark haddon
Perfect read for those who like Greek Myths with a contemporary twist. I’d choose The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood over this one though.
The Starless Sea is the long awaited second novel of Erin Morgenstern, who hit the literary scene with her 100% blockbuster novel The Night Circus. The Starless Sea is equally fine in its mix of magic and myth, but it didn’t give me the same sleepless nights of page turning awesomeness. Indeed, I almost didn’t cart this 500 pager with me on holiday. I’m glad I did.
Description: Zachary Ezra Rawlins is the son of a fortune teller. As a boy, he discovers a magic door painted on the alley wall. It’s obviously not a magic door, and he’s obviously too old to believe in magic, so he doesn’t try the knob. The thing is, he misses out, at least for a few years.
Zachary is studying video games and narrative in university and strange things happen. He finds a book in the library about the son of a fortune teller who finds a painted door on an alley wall and doesn’t open it. Wait, what! The book is about Zachary. The spin-tingling magic starts shortly after he takes the train, on a lark, to a costume party, where he’s hoping to find a woman wearing a necklace with a bee, a key, and a sword.
Turns out those painted doors open and lead down to the labyrinth land of the Starless Sea.
Favourite quote:
The boy is the son of the fortune-teller. He has reached an age that brings an uncertainty as to whether this is something to be proud of, or even a detail to be divulged, but it remains true.
He walks home from school toward an apartment situated above a shop strewn with crystal balls and tarot cards, incense and statues of animal-headed deities and dried sage. (The scent of sage permeates everything, from his bedsheets to his shoelaces.)
Today, as he does every school day, the boy takes a shortcut through an alleyway that loops behind the store, a narrow passage between tall brick walls that are often covered with graffiti and then whitewashed and then graffitied again.
Today, instead of the creatively spelled tags and bubble-lettered profanities, there is a single piece of artwork on the otherwise white bricks.
It is a door.
The Starless Sea
There are so many magical moments in this novel. I loved the incredible descriptions of the costume balls. Every time there was a short story within the novel, it was a magical little moment.
The Starless Sea is the perfect read for lovers of fairy tales and people who believe in magic doors, fans of The Night Circus or Ron Livingston’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.
