Though it can seem like it sometimes, the world’s not all bad. Apparently whales are learning to speak human, or at least trying, and that’s pretty awesome. Maybe once they get the hang of it they can advise us how to live better.

Canadian publishing is about to get smaller with Douglas & McIntyre filing for bankruptcy protection. Shortly before that announcement, the co-founder Scott McIntyre was announced as the recipient of the first-ever Ivy Award. John Barber comments in The Globe and Mail, and Matt Williams of House of Anansi responds.

Not to mention the impending merger of two of the world’s largest publishing houses, Penguin and Random House. See Quillblog’s poll for their merger name. I like House of the Random Penguin best, myself.

And, while we’re at it, the Toronto Women’s  Bookstore is closing at the end of November. You can read a great tribute on here.

At least some of us are still reading (though, that said, people have been ringing death knells for the book pretty much since they started to print them) . The Canada Reads 2013 long list has been announced (though none of my suggestions made the list). You can vote for your pick in each region until November 5th, so get your vote on.

• Here’s a postcard from Ernest Hemingway sent to Gertrude Stein.
• Santa’s pipe is to be sanitized from a new edition of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, sparking censorship debates. Which is just silly.
• Ok, this is pretty awesome: The Best of Book Spine Poetry.
• And here you’ll find poets touching trees.
• The Al Purdy a-frame has been saved, though donations are still needed.
• The rules of WRITE CLUB to not match those of Fight Club, but it still sounds intense.
• EB White on being a writer.
• A poet talks about the power of poetry and why it should be taught more from a young age.
• Book Riot on what your book pile says about you. I’m not sure I agree (of course I’ll read all these books one day…) but I can’t turn down good book porn.
• Sylvia Plath would have been fifty this year. Hear her read “Daddy” here.
• Though readings, as in those things you go to where the author reads from hir book, are changing. Apparently, there’s a lot less actual reading.
• There’s a new literary prize for Canadian women.
• Female lions can rock manes too.

I’m going to assume you’ve already seen the trailer for Iron Man 3, and that you think it’s “dark.” But if you haven’t, there’s the link.

Happy weekend, kids.

A mixed bag of poetry, graphic novels, non-graphic novels, literary criticism and other non-fiction.

66. Selected Poems, by Robert Bringhurst
(Gaspereau Press, 2009)

I haven’t read Bringhurst before, but this collection was recommended to me. It contains selected poems from several other works. Philosophy and a wandering geography, from Japan to the Middle East and elsewhere, I’m not sure I was up to some of these poems, but I’d like to see more. This is a collection I can see myself coming back to again, and again.

67. The Giant Seed, by Arthur Geisert
(Enchanted Lion Books, 2012)

A wordless children’s book featuring a town of tiny pigs, whose homes are destroyed due to a volcanic eruption.  They fly away to safety on giant seeds. Continue reading »

I’ve never really set targets for my reading before, beyond a general expectation that I’d read at least a hundred books a year, but last year a friend pushed me to challenge myself to commit to 150. According to Goodreads I surpassed it, but according to my own count I read 135. I read twenty-seven graphic novels that I hadn’t added to the count. For the past three years, I’ve listed the graphic novels I’ve read, but not included them in the total number of books I read.

This was, admittedly, due to a foolish prejudice I’d acquired that graphic novels somehow didn’t count as “proper books”. Most of them can be read in about an hour, often they’re picture (rather than text) heavy, and though I read comics prodigiously in high school (Marvel universe FTW), I couldn’t quite convince myself to put them at the same level as the classic lit I was also reading.

I know, I know. It was snobbish and stupid. There are tons of wonderful and highly literate examples in the medium. Marjane Satrapi’s Persopolis, and Blankets by Craig Thompson, Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series is rife with literary allusions, both overt and more subdued. It’s not all men wearing underwear over their spandex leotards and large breasted women bursting from their flimsy costumes. Graphic novels count. Books like Kate Beaton’s excellent collection of comics Hark! A Vagrant count.

So, for the first time I’m including comics and graphic novels in my official tally of books read. I feel like I’ve grown as a person. Continue reading »