Approximately forever ago, we had a mid-winter KIRBC meeting! The book-loving hordes descended on the House of Kong in record numbers, and somehow without the ruthless timekeeping of one Erin Balser, we managed to get in 21 great recos. Here are the books that were worth facing the hecklers:
JK (@jen_knoch) – Farm Anatomy, by Julia Rothman
- A gorgeously illustrated picture book about the basic elements of farm life from soil to tractor types, chicken breeds to weathervanes
- An art object, but also informative and playful
- A go-to for farm fondling
Mark Luk – The Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart
- A book steeped in Chinese culture and tradition
- Kelvin: “Is that your notebook?”
- Nic (on the title): “That would never work”
- There aren’t that many good ancient Chinese novels
- Fictionalized ancient China 600 AD
- Fantastic adventure: magic, mystery, murder, poison, emperors
- Chinese Holmes and Watson, or Chinese Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or Princess Bride
- Fantasy romance, sword fighting
- Hard to find
- Somehow captured the feeling of what it is to be Chinese – captured the history, literature, culture, made it fun and funny.
Sally (@sallyspar) – You are a Cat, by Sherwin Tjia
- Choose Your Own Adventure returns!
- Not a book for kids!!
- Kelvin: “The earlier kids learn about cat fucking the better”
- Really graphic illustrations
- “Are cats moral creatures?”
- You can die 8x because cats have nine lives
- Pictures drawn from the cat perspective
- Teaser titles at the end are hilarious
Trish (@trishosuch)– The Sweet Life in Paris, by David Lebovitz
- “He’s a bitchy queen and I love him.”
- Trained at Chez Panisse with Alice Waters
- Love letter to Paris and food
- Him meeting his sexy partner Roman
- The way he describes Parisians is hilarious
- Took it out from the library, and a bestie picked it out for Trish knowing she would like it
Nathan (@nrmaharaj) – How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
- When Nathan didn’t have a beard (a great story beginning) he saw Sheila Heti in aviator goggles in a Nightwood Play (his review of the play: “you didn’t know what it was about but it still broke your heart”)
- The story is a “Look at this fucking hipster” game.
- Sheila Heti started following him on Twitter and he felt special, so he felt like he should catch up on his Heti.
- Book is about all the anxiety of writing a play, (Nathan situates it as “after I left her”)
- Shannon: “a lot of Parkdale gossip, basically”
- What does it mean to be yourself, what does it mean to be true?
- All kinds sexy bits, there are things about vaginas!
- Weird and embarrassing and takes you places you don’t want to go
- Kelvin, Nathan and Sheila Heti went to university together (and Shannon went to high school with them)
Emily (@emilymkeeler) – Ghosts, by Cesar Aira
- Kelvin: “I’ve read that. I love the part where they do the pottery.”
- Picked up the book because of the design (only a white dot on the cover)
- Family living in an unfinished building, but about literature as a dream, about stories and our built and unbuilt lives
- Naked ghosts with glowing red penises
- Naked man ghosts “Basically a fever dream.” “Isn’t that how a person should be?”
- “It’s Beetlejuice with a glowing red dick”
- “The penises are important but not that important”
- Nic: “That’s a Peterborough parable right there.”
- Argentinian author with a no-revision policy
- Literary critic so all of his books are explorations of what literature really means
Heather (@la_panique) Down and Out in Paris in London, by George Orwell
- Nic: “Is it like 1984 in Paris?”
- A non-fiction account of Orwell’s time in Paris living in squalor (he was a dishwasher)
- Orwell before he was kind of a big deal, in the trenches with everybody
Jo (@JoKaraplis) – The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
- You know what makes a really great love story? Cancer.
- 2 teenagers who meet at a cancer support group and fall in love.
- He signed 150,000 books, and drew a fish in 4 of them – crazy marketing. Also how could speed not be involved?
- Really funny despite the subject matter
- She had two cries but also literally laughed out loud
Julian (@mexicanuck) – The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
- Preemptive apology? No need.
- Two immigrant kids in the U.S . who flee Europe and are living in new York
- Two kids with their sites set on the American dream
- Drama, laughs, coming of age, self-discovery
- Nic: “You lost me with the publishers making a lot of money.”
Kelvin (@kingvonelk) — The Reading List, by Leslie Shimotakahara
- 2nd generation Japanese scholar teaching in Antigonish, moves back to Toronto
- Dad asking for reading list , they read together, they discover dark family secrets Nic: “What are they reading, diaries?” Through literature dad learns to get over his issues and family problems
- Kelvin: “I thought I’d hate it, but it’s actually really good.”
- Elevator pitch: like the film club with books.
Bronwyn (@b_kienapple): Lucky Jim, by Martin Amis
- I thought I’d hate it, like it would be Russell Smith but earlier, and it kind of looks like it
- A man falls on a woman, and something indescribable happens
- Not the usual scandal you’d expect in a university novel
- Jim is faking his way into being a prof.
- Has a lot of whisky and fakes his way through a lecture
- Kind of like The Office: even though he fucks up in every single way, he’s rewarded (“like every novel by a man written about a man.”)
- Seconded by a lot of people
Sarah (@sarahlabrie) – The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater
- Carnivorous cannibalistic water horses
- And every Fall, because of magic, they wash up on the shore and people will try to catch them
- Horses go crazy and sometimes they eat people
- Nic: “Isn’t this Seabiscuit?” Nathan: “That just means aliens”
- Ron’s elevator pitch: “You know what people love? Ponies. You know what boys love? Ponies who eat people.”
Geoff (@mailgeoffrey) – This Is a Call: The Life and Times of Dave Grohl, by Paul Brannigan
- Dense and fantastic
- About his influence and how’s been able to get our of Nirvana’s shadow forever
- Writer is a writer for Spin magazine, 10 years of interviews
Ben (@bendu) – Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A Year Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts, by Gare Joyce
- A book about white people who were born in Canada mostly
- A scout who hang out with the Columbus Blue Jackets for a year
- Moneyball about hockey with no smart guys
- Scouts as people who suffer for their work
- There’s a lack of good hockey writing out there
Chloe (@chloevice) – Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney
- One of Chloe’s favourite books
- Written in the second person (Sally: “Mine was, but it’s choose your own adventure”)
- Don’t be grossed out by the cover, “it looks like someone took a shit on it.”
- Comparison: Less than Zero and this one’s better.
Nic (@nicboshart): The Keep, by Jennifer Egan
- She writes these preposterous stories
- “If you explained any of her of her stories to me I’d tell you to screw off”
- Digression about how Nic is an Alsatian metrosexual
- It’s like “Here’s a stupid plot but I’m going to write it so you cry all the time”
- Funny, sad, really poppy
- Nick Horby with depth
- Read everything by her
Ron (@boyreporter) – Let’s Talk About Love, by Carl Wilson (33 1/3 series).
- Music writers write about their favourite album or an album that’s been influential.
- Kind of inconsistent: some written by academics, some by awesome music writers
- 31 million copies of this album (fewer Canadians alive than there are copies of this album) around this world and the author HATES it.
- How is taste instructed through the lens of Celine Dion.
- What does her identity mean in relation to her music.
- Critique of tribalism and the way we understand taste
- James Franco inadvertently recommended it on the red carpet at the Oscars.
- Kelvin: “So there’s no urban planning in the book?”
Matt (@m_cahill) — The Tiger, by John Valiant
- Story’s been optioned by Brad Pitt
- Story of a Tiger attack and of a place, the Russian far east, the boreal jungle
- Like something out of a weird King Kong movie
- About a trapper who is hunted and killed by a tiger and the exploration to figure out why this Tiger killed him (which kept taking out more people: “What was the tiger’s motivation?”)
- “I’m not an animal-driven reader”
- Vengeance, Russia, Tigers, Oh My.
- “Jaws in the fucking Siberian jungle.”
- A tiger going after one person: a tiger mastermind.
- History with an environmental edge
- Description of the tiger and its capabilities is “Nobody fucking talk, I’m reading this.”
Ingrid (@ingridpaulson) – The Many Revenges of Kip Flynn, by Sean Dixon
- Toronto, Kensington Market and the Three usually don’t mix
- Underground rivers, rich vs. poor, protestant vs. wild
- A seamless books
- Old families vs. new, commercialism, what actually goes on in Kensington
- Bringing forward the magical things that are just under the crust of Toronto, brought out in a brisk, well-thought out way
- And it has a nice cover.
Shannon (@swhibbsy) – The Big Dream, by Rebecca Rosenblum
- Shannon and Rebecca were cubicle buddies at Harlequin: “We proofread bad porn all day.”
- Rosenblum’s second collection
- A couple characters make it over from her first collection
- Vaguely linked short stories
- Takes place at a lifestyle magazine publisher
- Great range of characters
- Stories span from the customer services reps to the CEOs, range of ethnicities, sexualities, economic backgrounds
Adam (@agpasquella) – The Oxford Project, Photos by Peter Feldstein Text by Stephen G. Bloom
- Photo book: photographed every person in the town, 30 years later
- Oxford, Iowa,
- Incredibly humanist
- Lenticular cover!
- Not fiction but fascinating
- Almost like an exit interview 25 years later
- “Like a Peterborough high school reunion”
- American book, in a good way.
Sorry the notes were briefer in some cases than others: distraction + din + wine makes me a kind of lousy secretary. Thanks to all who came out, especially to all the new KIRBCers, who hopefully weren’t scared off, and to Kelvin for being a super host, as always. The next book club will be chez Erin Balser on Thursday, April 12th, at 7:00 p.m. Synchronize your watches!
