In Canada, October means colder temperatures; trees reddening as if blushing in advance of their foliage falling off, leaving them naked; an Indian summer that will give us a last warm embrace before another long winter; but mostly, October means that hockey is back. This year is even more special with the rebirth of a Canadian team, the Winnipeg Jets.
I’ll come back to the Jets in a moment. Right now, I want to mention that the season of the turkey, of the pumpkin and of little monsters eating candies, is also an excellent time to read a few good books. It is, in our industry, the big season when thousands of books are published—many of them by independent publishers who are scattered everywhere A Mari Usque Ad Mare.
Go to your nearest bookstore and have a look at books by Canadian authors. Want some suggestions? OK, I have a few. If you’re into memoirs or biographies, I strongly recommend I Just Ran by Samuel Hawley (from Vancouver’s Ronsdale Press) about the life of Percy Williams, a Canadian athlete who was the Ben Johnson of his era –without the illegal drugs. He was the best in the world, winning the gold medal at both the 100 and 200-metre races of the 1928 Olympics. Williams’s world record would be bested by the great Jesse Owens at the 1932 Berlin Olympics, in front of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The success-story of Williams quickly became a tragedy after his career as an athlete.
A very good memoir is Kathy Dobson’s With A Closed Fist: Growing Up in Canada’s Toughest Neighbourhood (from Montreal’s Vehicule Press). This title is a staff favourite here at the LPG. Dobson, a CBC reporter, tells very candidly, from the perspective of her young teenage self, a wrenching, sad and also at times hilarious story of living in Montreal’s Pointe St-Charles (“The Point”) with her mother, five sisters and part-time father, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Amidst poverty, squalor, violence, and sexual abuse, the only things that matter are the bond between sisters and the fight for a better life: it’s a fight that Kathy’s mother saw as the only chance to give her daughters a better future, but also to give hope to a whole neighbourhood.
If you prefer mysteries, I suggest Who Killed Janet Smith? by Edward Starkins (from Vancouver’s Anvil Press). OK, it’s not fiction, it is a true crime book that examines one of the oldest unsolved murders in Canada’s history, but it reads just like a novel. It’s a bit cliché to say this but it is true. You follow the investigation through the perspective of different people just like in some of the best mystery novels out there. Only difference is that you won’t really know who killed Janet Smith at the end, but that’s the whole point of the book, even if it doesn’t seem to make much sense to read a mystery without solving it at the end. But as Tom Clancy once said “The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense”. Not reality.
For a ‘real’ mystery, you can look towards Stan Rogal’s “Bloodline” (London’s Insomniac Press) a chilling serial killer yarn spattered with some paranormal. Don’t be scared away by this aspect because it never spoils the plot and I’d even say it gives the story a creepier atmosphere. You can also read one of Anthony Bidulka’s many entertaining crime novels, sometimes on the cozy side, starring private investigator Russell Quant. Insomniac Press is reissuing Bidulka’s popular series in a smaller paperback format and you can start with the first one “Amuse Bouche” or just pick up anywhere in the series: read them in order or not, you’ll enjoy all of them. Bidulka is a Canadian secret that needs to be revealed.
In general fiction, there are so many good choices, but two that are among my favourites of the year are Tristan Hughes’s dark and eerie Eye Lake and Sina Queyras’s moving story of siblings in Autobiography of Childhood (both from Toronto’s Coach House Press). For our readers in the UK, Eye Lake is available from Picador.
Looking for books intended for a younger crowd? How about The Haunting of Amos Manor by Richard Stevenson (from Kingsville’s Palimpsest Press) and you can’t go wrong either with Freddy’s War by Judy Schultz (from Victoria’s Brindle & Glass). The former is intended for a 9 to 12 audience, and the latter, although intended for a general audience, would interest a YA crowd of 15 and up as the main character, Freddy, is 15 years old.
We also have some illustrated stories for kids (for 4 to 8 years old). I really enjoyed Pirate Gran by Geraldine Durrant, illustrations by Rose Forshall. The book is a hit in the UK and our own Breakwater Books, in St. John’s, has picked up Canadian rights. A sequel is in the works for the granny who used to be a pirate. Also, kids and adults will enjoy the story of Gus and Isaac by Debbie Hanlon, illustrations by Grant Boland (also Breakwater Books). This cat (Isaac) and seagull (Gus) bizarre friendship is original and works on more than one level.
Back to the Winnipeg Jets. As if he could predict the future, Gordon Shillingford, owner of Winnipeg’s Shillingford Publishing and its imprint Sirocco (for plays and other drama books), decided to publish a book titled Forgotten Heroes: Winnipeg’s Hockey Heritage even before there was a chance that professional hockey would come back to the city. With probably some dumb luck thrown into the mix, Gordon decided that the pub date for the book would be October 6, 2011. As fate would have it, the Jets start their season three days later. The book is written by Richard Brignall, who compiled an incredible amount of information that must have been exhaustive and exhausting research. The book covers almost a hundred years of hockey, from the Winnipeg Victorias, winners of the Stanley Cup in 1896, to players and teams of the late 1950s. My guess is that these heroes will not be forgotten anymore. It is a book for readers interested in our country’s hockey history, specifically that of Manitoba, and for hockey fans everywhere just like these players were from different places scattered A Mari Usque Ad Mare.
Now you can buy a book or two, or three if you can afford to spend a few more dollars. Then go back home and settle in your favourite chair: maybe it’s the one on the patio that you’ve meant to replace every spring since Mordecai Richler stopped writing, but it’s so comfortable, like a good old gardening glove, that you’ve kept it all this time and maybe, just maybe, you might throw it away next spring and buy a new one; for some, the favourite chair is the couch in which they’ll also be watching a few hockey games this winter; could be it is in your bed that you prefer reading, and I won’t be the one to discourage you as I love reading in bed –when you’re ready to fall asleep all you need to do is put the book on the bedside table and, almost in the same motion, turn off the lamp and fall off deep into stories of dreamland. Wherever you decide to read, we’re just glad you still do, especially if you buy books from some of our independent publishers.
