|
I'm shooting for 60 again this year. My regular reading range already hits on a lot of Stravinsky's list, and my reading list for last year includes some great suggestions for folks looking for non-white and/or female authors, as well as the plays of Tomson Highway, which I highly recommend.
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2015 17:24
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 01:34 |
|
|
elbow posted:Thanks everyone for the poetry recommendations! One more recommendation just for you elbow - Elizabeth Bishop. I stole this from her poets.org bio: poets.org posted:Bishop’s poetry avoids explicit accounts of her personal life and focuses instead with great subtlety on her impressions of the physical world. Former Poet Laureate of the USA, Pulitzer Winner, and (I think) pretty accessible.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2015 04:15
|
|
|
Yikes, I was reading some suggestions that others have made, and realized that I absolutely have to throw this out there (feel free to pick it up as a wildcard) .. the most amazing piece of writing that most of you (and pretty much all non-Canadians) have never heard of: George Elliott Clarke's Whylah Falls. Oddly, wikipedia does an okay job of summing up a difficult-to-sum-up piece of work: Whylah Falls is a long narrative poem (or "verse novel") by George Elliott Clarke, published in book form in 1990. As with much of Clarke's work, the poem is inspired by the history and culture of the Black Canadian community in Nova Scotia, which he refers to as the "Africadian" community (a combination of the words "African" and "Acadian"). Clarke himself describes the work as a "blues spiritual about love and the pain of love". Whylah Falls tells the story of several pairs of black lovers in southwestern Nova Scotia in the 1930s, through dramatic monologues, songs, sermons, sonnets, newspaper snippets, recipes, haiku and free verse. It has also been released in audio book form, with an original jazz score performed by Joe Sealy, Jamie Gattie and Steve Macdonald to accompany the reading. Clarke also adapted the poem into a stage play, which premiered in 1999. Whylah Falls was a winner of the Archibald Lampman Award for poetry. The book was also chosen for the CBC's inaugural Canada Reads competition in 2002, where it was championed by author Nalo Hopkinson. Clarke is amazing, and alive, and still writing, and still lecturing and speaking and available at Word on the Street most years here in Toronto.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2015 22:04
|
|
|
Play chat: Enjoyed GB Shaw's Arms and the Man (its Shaw, its great), Caryl Churchill's Top Girls (being a successful career woman in the early 80s), John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (which was the genesis for the "angry young man" genre), Tomson Highway's Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing and the Rez Sisters (Canadian, 90s, seminal Native works) - there is a lot to chose from. I'm going to try for Michel Tremblay's Les Belle Souers in French, with an English version to back up my spotty French language skills. On Waiting for Godot: For the love of all that is good and decent, this is not the greatest introduction to plays and playwrights. On the Importance of Being Ernest: the best suggestion for total newbies, great, funny, snappy, entertaining! Godot: existential and long and nothing happens because its existential and oh god if you aren't someone who loves analysis and not being entertained than you probably will not like this and may never read another play ever and I promise other plays are not like this!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2015 22:23
|
|
|
First update of the year and a very good batch of books to start with: John Christopher - The Death of Grass: A 1950s post-apocalyptic novel that reads like the Walking Dead. Extreme global famine sees a group of Londoners band together in an effort to get to the remote and defensible farm of the main character's brother. Rape, murder, the breakdown of society and the main character lets go of the world-as-it-used-to-be faster than our good friend Rick Grimes. Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch: I think most people are familiar with this by now. I enjoyed it, but I don't really have much to add to the conversation. Richard Adams - Watership Down: Classic British children's book that I had never read, but knew was about sentient bunnies. Entertaining, but bothersome for its lack of female bunnies, other than as necessary procreation devices, which I discovered after reading was a common feminist criticism of the book. There was no reason to have a male-bunny only focus, especially since rabbits have matriarchal societies. Kim Thuy - Ru: Canada Reads 2015 contender - A beauty of a book that moves through time with short chapters that are almost prose poetry. The 'story' of a Vietnamese immigrant to Canada. I finished reading it while on the bus on the way home from work, and was surprised to realize I had welled up - it resonated through me in an unexpected way, like tearing up to a piece of music. It isn't a "sad" book, but an amazing piece of writing. I haven't read anything like it in a very very long time. Thomas King - The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America: Just read it, okay. Offset with humour, and somewhat repetitious in places, this is a great overview of terrible history. Kim Fu - For Today I Am a Boy: Longlisted for Canada Reads but not a contender this year. The protagonist is transgender, born male but identifying as female from a young age, the child of Chinese immigrants to Canada. The 30-year story is about self-realization, but there is little external conflict or struggle outside of trying to understand or grow into who she is. Kamal Al-Solaylee - Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes: Also a Canada Reads contender. I found this very fascinating, as my history of Yemen and Egypt from the 60s-early 80s is non-existent. Wealthy Yemeni family is essentially driven out of Yemen when colonialism falls, finds solace in a very liberal Egypt that is quite westernized (hijabs are seen as "hickish") only for Egypt to become progressively more restrictive, and they find themselves escaping Egypt for the closed world of Yemen (as we know it today). The author, the youngest child in the family, discovers as a teen in liberal Egypt that he is gay, and leaves his family to attend studies in England and gain PR in Canada. He has a hard time reconciling the young, liberal, music, makeup and fun loving family of his youth in Egypt with the downtrodden, cowed, closed minded family he visits years later in Yemen. A memoir of extremes, indeed. Dionne Brand - What We All Long For: Glorious, a song of youth and desire and tendrils of life intertwining and coming apart in Toronto in the early 2000s. I can't come up with an overview to do it justice, so instead just listen to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme and take that as my review. Lee Maracle - Celia's Song: This book is magic on paper. I want to recommend it to all my reading friends, but I know they won't appreciate it  Mink is the witness, Snake (Restless/Loyal) is loose as the people have not kept the accord, Celia is a visionary, and she bears witness to her family's histories, and helps each family member come together to begin healing their village. It was another beautiful and oddly crafted book. Jocelyne Saucier - And the Birds Rained Down: Another Canada Reads contender. A bunch of really really old guys living in the woods, a photographer on the hunt for survivors of the great fires of the early 20th century, an illegal pot farm, and an elderly escapee from psychiatric care. Oh, and a bunch of dogs (very important in the wilderness). 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 10/60 2. Read a female author Donna Tartt, Kim Thuy, Kim Fu, Dionne Brand, Lee Maracle and Jocelyn Saucier 3. The non-white author Kim Thuy, Kim Fu, Thomas King, Kamal Al-Solaylee, Dionne Brand and Lee Maracle 11. Something on either hate or love What We All Long For, Celia's Song and And the Birds Rained Down all have elements of love. Celia's song, and the snake Restless/Loyal can been seen as Hate/Love 13. Something dealing with the unreal Celia's Song
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2015 17:40
|
|