Robin mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, and I think I posted already, but I met Freddy last night. He’s making a fantastic graphic novel of Orwell’s 1984 (see: gutenberg australia’s ebook).
Freddy is selling these posters for $12 a pop:
And here is the opening scene (you can get it in B&W or colour):
Please.
Writers, whether you are writing a lowly blog, a popular book, or an academic text, if ever you see in a sentence of yours the word “utilize,” please, please, strike it out, without asking any questions, and replace it with the word “use.” Then read your sentence again. See how it says exactlty what you wanted?
Whether you need to appeal to Occam’s razor, George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, or just common aesthetic sense matters not one whit.
Just don’t utilize the word “utilize,” when all you mean is “use.”
Lullabies for Little Criminals
Book by Heather O’Neill
O’Neill, whose radio work can be heard on Public Radio International’s “This American Life” and CBC’s “Wiretap,” channels her gift for images through Baby’s words: “His compliments,” she says about her father, “were like little cupcakes all lined up in a window.” She is also a heartbreakingly wise poet: “If you want to get a child to love you, then you should just go and hide in the closet for three or four hours. They get down on their knees and pray for your return. That child will turn you into God. Lonely Children probably wrote the Bible.”
Since Mordechai Richler died, you hear the occasional mutterings about who will be the next anglo bard of Montreal. Yann Martel took a stab by winning the Booker Prize for Life of Pi, but his writing (whatever its success) is in no way attached to Montreal. But here, I think, we have the only true contender to date, a novelist that in zeroing in on the gritty particular, has raised her book to a marvelous universal. This is the most exciting novel I have read by a Canadian writer in many years. It has its flaws (the impressionistic and circumambulatory narration feels a little forced in places; the staccato writing somewhat disjointed), but those minor quibbles are nothing compared with its strengths: the voice, the humour, the beauty, the emotion, the full broken-down world recreated in the eyes of its beholder.
O’Neill’s second novel is reportedly coming out soon. Second novels, so they say, are the tough ones. I’m rooting for her.
My rating: stars
Over Xmas & New Years, I was away from computer a fair bit and I actually got some reading done. It was fantastic. So, not really a New Yrs resolution or anything, but just by happenstance, I was reading more, and even better, got back on the novel horse, and am chugging along through Chapter 8 of the new one (that’s about half-way done the whole thing, roughly). Feels good.
Patrick posted this about books he read in 2006 (well done); and Julien plans to read 52 - a book a week - in 2007. So I am going to jump in and join the fray.
I tried doing the book-a-week thing in 2005, I think, and got stalled. That always happens. Well, I shall try again this year. Maybe we can have a weekly support-group meeting.
Normally my reading modus is one novel and one non-fiction book at the same time. For the record, here are the last 5 books I have read, with the following star ratings:
*** to be stored on my top shelf, to the left of my desk
** please return after you are done with it
* satisfactory
ZERO a book I did not like
***Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow
*The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins (explanation for my rating coming here soon)
**A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
***Notes on a Catastrophe, by Elizabeth Kolbert
**The Upside of Down, by Thomas Homer-Dixon
(I note that I have been very lucky with these last reads … ususally I don’t have so many 2/3-stars to give out)
And here is my reading plan for the next little while, subject to change of course:
Fiction:
-Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
-Lullabies for Little Criminals, by Montrealer Heather O’Neil (really looking forward to this one)
-Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon
-Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevski
-Slow Man, by JM Coetzee
-A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews
-The Time in Between, David Bergen
Non-Fiction:
-Programming the Universe, by Seth Lloyd
-The Wealth of Networks, by Yochai Benkler
-The Human Touch, Michael Frayne
-The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins
-America at the Crossroads, by Francis Fukayama
-Hubris, by Michael Iskoff and David Corn
-The Prince of the Marshes, by Rory Stewart
I think I need to throw some candy in there to get through it all. And that gets me to mid-April, roughly.
Back in 2004, I did a whole lot of work researching and writing for a dinosaur exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Nature for Show Communications, a company that develops museum exhibits, owned by a friend of mine.
Anyway, I just spoke to Lowell, and apparently the exhibit has been up at the museum since October! Ha! Either I didn’t read his email, or he didn’t press the send button, but this is the first I’ve heard of it…
Anyway, here is the web site: Talisman Energy Fossil Gallery (yes, funded by an oil company…).
Christine and I will visit soon. And here is where you, too, can go see it: Canadian Museum of Nature.
(PS can you believe the Museum didn’t even invite the contractors who spent months making the exhibit to the opening? I asked Lowell about that and he said, “They almost weren’t going to let me attend.” Ah, to be oppressed… reminds me of the joke about Hollywood: “That blonde starlet is so stupid, she slept with the writer.”)
I’ve posted that I’m going to be writing about the development of LibriVox over at a new weblog space TextoSolvo. So that’ll be the place for most of my ramblings about teh internets and whatnot.
Dose, then, will become more of a personal space, and I might yak more about politics and stuff, which I have been doing here in any case. Also, you’ll hear more about my cat (with photos).
Please pop in if you are nearby, I’ll be there:
News Conference at Atwater Library and Computer Centre
1200 Atwater Avenue (at Tupper)
Thursday, November 30th at 4:00 PMSenator Andrée Champagne
to Speak about Digital Literacy Project Serving Youth and Community Organizations
24 November 2006 – Conservative Senator Andrée Champagne, the Quebec caucus representative for cultural issues, along with Atwater Library and Computer Centre (ALCC) Board members will hold a news conference at the ALCC at 1200 Atwater Avenue (corner of Tupper) on Thursday, November 30th at 4:00 pm.Senator Champagne will make a presentation about a Department of Canadian Heritage contribution to an exciting new ALCC initiative called the Atwater Digital Literacy Project. The goal of the project is to develop and support creative new media learning programs for Anglophone youth and community organizations. New media include audio, video animation and text publishing done through the internet.
more info about the project.
I’ve been thinking for a while that a lot of what we do at LibriVox, and how we do it, could be useful for other people who wish to start open, community-driven projects.
I just launched a blog to talk about this stuff, with the idea of maybe having a book out of the process sometime in the future. I’d also love to have contributions from people on librivoxy issues - obviously in the comments, but probably in longer format too, so stay tuned there.
Here it is, if anyone is interested: TextoSolvo
I sent Blind Spot to the publishers (House of Anansi) just now. Now, I do my best to forget it, while I await an answer from them (they have seen 30 pages, wanted to see the rest … no guarantees, but it’s nice to get a call-back at least). I read through it over the past couple of weeks, cut out about 10,000 words.
And: now I can get back to work on Novel #2 - which, I am fairly certain, is a far, far better novel. Verging on half-way through it now.
When I saw the letter, I said to myself, “Oh look, another rejection letter.” It was from House of Anansi, the granddaddy of Canadian small presses, where Atwood and Ondaatje published some of their early stuff. Really, it is my top choice of Canadian small presses. And I think, just about the last rejection that hasn’t come in yet … the letter weighed about right for a “thanks for giving us the opportunity…” letter.
I opened it and yes indeed, that’s what it was:
“Dear Mr. McGuire,” it read, “Thank you for your submission to House of Anansi Press.” (same format as the rest of them). “We’ve been experiencing a backlog in submissions that has caused considerable delays in our evaluation process. We apologize for the long wait.” (translation, we’re really busy, and you are lucky to be getting this letter: now that we have buttered you up, the next sentence will crush your dreams of becoming a published author). “However,” (what’s this? however? oh, right however, we don’t see a fit for your novel in our catalog, correct?) …
“However, we are interested in seeing the full manuscript for Blind Spot for the purpose of further evaluation.”
What? What? What?
A yes! Sort of… for those that don’t know, in the publishing world you send a sample and if you get past the first gate, they want to see the rest. This is the first publishing house that wanted to see the rest.
Very happy.
Though, I have read through the first quarter of the book, and I think its got some real weakness. Still. Toe in the door. And since I am writing another one, one I am much more confident about, well … this is just fantastic news any way I slice it, even if it doesn’t get published.
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