Literary Treats

Treat yourself to good books!

Random House of Canada Blogger Love Fest

Posted on 12 February 2012 by Jaclyn

What better way for a publisher to celebrate Valentine’s Day than by celebrating a love for books and book lovers? When I got the invitation for Random House of Canada’s Blogger Love Fest, promising “food, fun, books and very special guests,” I was expecting cookies and maybe a free book. Who would the “very special guests” be? I figured we might possibly have an author drop by, or maybe a Random House Canada (RHC) executive who would tell us about their blogger program. To be honest, I got the invitation so long ago that on the day of the event, I completely forgot about the “very special guests” part and was just looking forward to finally meeting RHC online marketing assistant and tweeter Lindsey and to seeing #IndigoTweets pal Jen again.

To anyone not in Toronto, Feb 11th was freezing. Seriously, I went to a Harper Collins event a few months ago and there was a thunderstorm; yesterday, for this event, there was a flash freeze warning. Dear publishers — thank you for making my braving the elements all worth while.

I get into the building and must have looked completely lost because a fellow blogger approached me right away and asked if I was also there for the event. (Giselle — so great to meet you!) Turns out you need a pass to use the elevators, and even though the RHC office is just on the third floor, Giselle and I couldn’t find the stairs anywhere. So we ended up walking around the lobby lost together until a group of women show up and a couple of them had passes.

We got to the office and it was great finally meeting Lindsey from RHC. I love being able to finally put faces to names I chat with a lot online; it’s one of my favourite things about this kind of event. It may be because so many of the bloggers at this event already talk to each other online — the whole atmosphere was so warm and welcoming! Everyone was either hugging people they knew or squee-ing in recognition at people’s names. Random House: brilliant idea to give us all name tags with our blog names on them! The name tags made it much easier to link people to their online persona and to remember names.

We learned that there were three special guests that day: Ami McKay (Virgin Cure), Paula McLain (Paris Wife) and Erin Morgenstern (Night Circus)! Even better, it turns out Paula McLain was in that group that rode the elevator with me and Giselle! Random House Canada generously provided us all with copies of their books, which we could then have the authors sign. Best part is that the authors were going to be there for the entire event, so we had lots of time to just sit around and chat with them. I have heard such great things about all three books, so thank you, RHC, for this opportunity to meet the authors. Virgin Cure is the only one I haven’t read yet, but I’ve had so many customers gushing about McKay’s Birth House and, months ago, asking when Virgin Cure was to be released, that I can’t wait to read it myself.

I love that Lindsey gave a presentation with excerpts from blogger reviews of RHC titles. I was so excited I tweeted a photo of the first slide, on Night Circus, which included a great quote from Bella’s Bookshelves. My photo turned out really blurry, so here’s a much better one that Angel from Mermaid Vision took:

As a blogger, this just made me giddy. I get super excited when an author links to my review from his/her website, so seeing a quote from my post on such a professional looking publisher presentation, looking as good as a quote from the New York Times, just made my day. The quote Lindsey chose from my blog was from my review of Alan Bradley’s I Am Half-Sick of Shadows: “[Shadows] features Bradley’s signature mix of colourful characters, mysterious puzzles and heartwarming character relationships.” Okay, I admit it, I love the presentation because it’s such an ego-boost. The idea that Lindsey (or possibly someone else from RHC) actually took the time to read through our blog reviews and choose blurb-worthy quotes like the kind you see from professional reviewers makes me feel how much RHC values bloggers. Thank you for that, Random House Canada!

Lindsey also talked about upcoming titles from Random House that they’re excited about. I was fortunate enough to have received an ARC of one of them, Grace O’Connell’s Magnified World. I’ve read it and loved it so much I’ve lent my copy to my boss. My review for that will be posted on May 1, when the book will be on sale, but definitely, keep an eye out for it. About a young woman grieving over her mother’s suicide, Magnified World is set in Toronto (with a few chapters set in Port Credit, Mississauga!), and it gives such a wonderful sense of place that I can see it soon becoming part of the canon of Toronto literature.

Another forthcoming title I’m really excited to read is The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Lindsey described it as similar to Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, which I love so much that I’ve not only recommended it to many customers looking for a good read, but I’ve also gotten a couple of my co-workers as excited about it as I am. RHC says they’ll be doing some kind of walk-related event to promote Harold Fry — possibly a walking tour of Toronto with Shawn Micallef or a walk for charity event? Cass from RHC also mentioned an upcoming Dr. Seuss event — no idea what it is, but it’s Dr. Seuss, so count me in.

RHC had two tables of books, shirts, mugs and pens, and invited us to take home anything we wanted. Seriously, it felt like more like Christmas than Valentine’s. I saw a copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s Damned on the table — I’m a huge Palahniuk fan, ever since Fight Club, and, unable to believe I could be so fortunate, asked out loud, “Wait, anything on the table?!” Someone nearby confirmed, and like a rabid shopper on Boxing Day, I took (okay, grabbed) the Palahniuk. RHC even gave each of us a Valentine’s Day gift bag with books! When I saw the row of gift bags, I figured they had a couple of books each and we could each get one at random. To my surprise, each one was labelled. So each bag contained books chosen specifically for each blogger by the online marketing team. Way to make a girl feel special, RHC — thank you!

On Finally Reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Posted on 19 January 2012 by Jaclyn

Well, I’ve done it. A couple of years of failed attempts and a couple of weeks of dogged determination, and I’ve done it: I finished War and Peace. How was it? Easier than I expected. Tolstoy’s a master storyteller, and Anna Karenina is probably one of my favourite all-time classics. War and Peace was difficult to get into at first — it felt like dozens of characters were introduced in the first few chapters, and when my sister asked me what it was about so far, I mentioned at least four different story lines before her eyes glazed over and I realized I was narrating the entire book so far instead of summarizing. That’s because I had no clue at that point what the book was about yet; I was too busy juggling all these different characters. My edition (pictured above) didn’t have a family tree or character list in the beginning, so I took out a pen and started marking away. To whomever picks up my copy at a used booksale, I hope my minor notations help somewhat.

After reading the book, can I give a summary? War and Peace is about several Russian families during the Napoleonic War. That really only begins to get into what the book is about, but it’s a start.

Good news — shortly after the war scenes got into full swing, the characters became more fully fleshed out, and much easier to distinguish. To my surprise (given how frustrated I felt at the beginning of the book in keeping the characters straight), I started to feel strongly about these characters. I expected to be captivated by the war scenes, and definitely the stories of friendships among the soldiers were striking. But it was really the drawing room scenes that fascinated me — the romantic entanglements among the main characters could rival The Bachelor in melodrama. An example: Nikolay and Sonya were childhood sweethearts, but Nikolay’s mother wants him to marry a rich heiress instead to help the family’s financial situation. Nikolay thinks marrying for money is reprehensible, yet, to my horror, at one point encourages Sonya to accept another man’s marriage proposal. “WTF!” I wrote on the margin. (To whomever gets my copy of this book, I apologize. I couldn’t help myself.) Don’t worry about having been given a spoiler — with over 1400 pages of storytelling, so much more happens to that particular plot thread.

Sonya’s love life is one of my personal favourite plot threads in War and Peace, but Tolstoy has certainly created a lot of interesting characters. The vivacious Natasha is usually called the heroine, but I’m more intrigued by Princess Marya Bolkonsky, a woman with “a plain, sickly face,” but with beautiful eyes — “large, deep and luminous (rays of warm light seemed at times to radiate in streams from them) […] her eyes were more attractive than beauty.” I love that phrase: “more attractive than beauty.” Oh wow, Mr. Tolstoy. Princess Marya however knows she is plain, and so believes she is destined to take care of her aging father rather than find romance. Fascinating, sympathetic character.

There’s also a touching scene where a married couple throws a dinner party and invite VIPs in order to increase their own social standing. They consider their party a success because it was just like everyone else’s. This couple is probably not meant to be very sympathetic — the woman was shown being cruel as a child — but there was something really pathetic, and sympathetic, about their desire to be like everyone else.

I was somewhat disappointed by Natasha’s attitude after marriage. Spoiler free excerpt:

Every minute of [her husband’s] life belonged to her and their home. [He] was so far under petticoat government that he did not dare to be attentive, or even to speak with a smile, to any other woman; did not dare go to dine at the club, without good reason, simply for entertainment […] To make up for all this [he] had complete power in his own house […] In their own home Natasha made herself a slave to her husband; and the whole household had to go on tiptoe if the master were busy reading or writing in his study. (Epilogue Part 1, Chapter X)

Seriously? From both perspectives, doesn’t that seem a bit stifling? That was also shortly after Tolstoy wrote that the primary significance of marriage was the family: “Natasha needed a husband. A husband was given her; and the husband gave her a family. And she saw no need of another better husband.” Interesting switch on the idea of women as baby machines (in Natasha’s case, her husband appears to be the baby machine), but not very romantic.

Even in the war scenes, I was most fascinated by the characters whose families I’ve read about in the domestic scenes. For example, in one scene, Tolstoy writes that Andrey wasn’t happy about running into someone from his past because of all the memories of his most recent visit home. Details like this make the soldiers real to me, and intrigue me much more than the passages when leaders meet to discuss war strategy or when Tolstoy pontificates about Napoleon and history and the role of chance. Tolstoy does talk quite a bit about his ideas on history, and I can certainly imagine long academic discussions about these passages. However, it was the characters that kept War and Peace real for me.

That being said, a couple of lines from Tolstoy’s essay-like passages struck me as being especially profound:

To the flunkey no man can be great, because the flunkey has his own flunkey conception of greatness. (Part 15, Chapter V)

Why does a war or a revolution come to pass? We do not know. We only know that to bring either result to pass, men form themselves into a certain combination in which we all take part; and we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise; because it is a law. (Epilogue Part 2, VII)

True dat, Mr. Tolstoy.

Review | 77 Shadow Street, Dean Koontz

Posted on 5 January 2012 by Jaclyn

I like haunted house stories. Andrew Pyper’s The Guardians literally kept me up all night, and I identified with Joey Tribbiani when he had to keep Stephen King’s The Shining in the freezer. Still, Dean Koontz’s 77 Shadow Street, about an apartment complex with a history of its inhabitants mysteriously disappearing, mostly left me unmoved. In fairness to Koontz, 77 Shadow Street is a solid, well-written horror/thriller. I haven’t read Koontz in years, and remember only being seriously freaked out by Tick Tock. So I can’t really say how much avid Koontz fans will enjoy 77 Shadow Street.

The books that really creep me out are those where the threat is left intangible. You can sense the malevolence, but you have no idea where it’s coming from, or what its source wants. So when Koontz introduces his antagonist in the first thirty pages as a sinuous “black form,” I was disappointed. The creature is certainly menacing enough, and at parts, downright disgusting, but I was more grossed out than creeped out. We are introduced to the One fairly early, an amorphous evil entity who announces it will kill most of the residents, and presumably as many humans as it can. Scary, yes, but its grandiose tone and generic aim lacked menace for me, more like a cartoon villain’s evil master plan than like Hannibal Lecter’s far more chilling plots.

There are chilling moments, like when a woman tries to call the concierge only to be connected to a telephone operator from the 1930s, which has a Twilight Zone-like inexplicability that I love. There are also scenes where humour enhances the horror, like when the concierge is attacked: “Until now she hadn’t realized that in her right hand she still held the fork with which she had been eating Mausi Anupama’s delicious uttapam. […] She thrust with the fork and stopped her assailant […]” The idea of using a fork to stop a supernatural creature is absurd, yet when it’s the only viable weapon on hand, you can almost cheer when it works.

The potential victims are sympathetic enough, especially the children. I don’t usually like child characters, but Winny’s desire to be a hero is charming. I also really liked the pair of sisters; they added a nice touch of eccentricity and humour. Still, there were so many characters that it got confusing at times, and while I was generally sympathetic for all of them, I didn’t really feel invested in any of them.

The story picks up a bit for me near the end, with characters coming up with possible scientific explanations. I also liked the story behind the origin of the One, and the moral dilemma it presented some of the characters. I thought the One’s motivation was fairly standard and therefore unexciting, but I did enjoy the twist in the origin story. Still, overall, 77 Shadow Street didn’t really grab me. To be honest, I might have enjoyed it more as a movie. It would’ve been a gory, entertaining scream-fest and I would’ve left the theatre with no problems turning the light off that night. But as a book, it didn’t even make me scream.

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