January Magazine

Selected Poems by Robert Bringhurst

2009-07-06T09:04:00.001-07:00

A new book by Robert Bringhurst is always a noteworthy event. Bringhurst is an author, typographer, translator and award-winning poet and each of his books is a work of art on every level.It seems to me there is something even more special about Selected Poems (Gaspereau Press), a single volume that brings together selections from several of Bringhurst’s collections including The Beauty of the

New in Paperback: A Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America -- One State Quarter at A Time by Jim Noles

2009-07-03T00:30:00.000-07:00

In 1997, the 50 States Commemorative Coin Program Act was passed into law. It meant that, beginning in 1999 and over the course of the next decade, the U.S. Mint would issue five new quarters each year. It was determined that the quarters would be issued in the order that the states joined the Union. As author Jim Noles writes in A Pocketful of History (Da Capo):… Delaware, admitted to the Union

Fiction: Going Ashore by Mavis Gallant

2009-07-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

To say that Going Ashore (Douglas Gibson Books/McClelland & Stewart) may well be the most important work of fiction that will be published in Canada in 2009 sounds like hyperbole of the highest order. And, actually, it pretty much is. Yet immerse yourself in Mavis Gallant’s world. Read these 31 stories -- some of them never before published intact in book form -- and try to imagine anything

Non-Fiction: The Pursuit of Perfect by Tal Ben-Shahar

2009-07-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

If, in the course of reading a towering stack of books intended to make you perform better, faster and stronger you discover you have pushed yourself too close to perfection, then The Pursuit of Perfect (McGraw Hill) may well be the book for you.After a decade of teaching Happiness classes at Harvard (one gets the idea of a class of grad students sitting around blowing bubbles, but I don’t think

New Today: Children of the Waters by Carleen Brice

2009-07-02T11:00:00.000-07:00

In 2008, Carleen Brice was named Breakout Author of the Year at the African American Literary Awards Show. The book under discussion at that time was her debut novel, Orange Mint and Honey (which has, incidentally, been optioned for film by the Lifetime Movie Network).Though Orange Mint and Honey was Brice’s debut novel, that well-received work was not her first book. She is also the author of

Children’s Books: Ghost with A Message by Mary K. Pershall

2009-07-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ruby Clair is a girl who sees dead people. Well, the ghost of her cousin Nicola, anyway, plus any ghosts Nicola sends her way. Because she can see ghosts, Ruby can help them adjust. Ghost With A Message (Penguin Books Australia) is the second book in the Ruby Clair series. The ghost is a small child who has a message for her family, but can’t speak any better than any other three year old.Ruby

Edwards Aide to Ink Tell-All

2009-07-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

There’s something really awful in this item from Muckety:A man who was one of former Senator John Edwards’s closest aides has a deal to write a tell-all book about Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter that among other things repudiates his earlier claim that he is the father of Hunter’s baby.The aide, Andrew A. Young (not to be confused with politician and diplomat Andrew J. Young), reportedly

Review: Tuck by Stephen R. Lawhead

2009-06-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

Today in January Magazine’s SF/F section, Iain Emsley reviews Tuck by Stephen R. Lawhead.Setting the native British mythology against the conquering Norman stories, Lawhead echoes Philip Reeve’s Here Lies Arthur in trying to recover the real person behind the legend. Says Emsley:Stephen Lawhead's Tuck is the final installment of the King Raven trilogy. A retelling of the Robin Hood stories,

New in Paperback: The Oxford Companion to Italian Food by Gillian Riley

2009-06-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

If you were to ask cookbook aficionados for a list of the ten most influential cookbooks of all time, I’m betting that most all of them would include Larousse Gastronomique somewhere on that list. First published in 1938, that book is much more than a cookbook. It is an encyclopedia of gastronomy from the French perspective. You don’t necessarily read Larousse, you graze it, browsing at various

Conrad V. Conrad

2009-06-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

Joseph Conrad’s masterwork, Heart of Darkness, first published in book form in 1902, is one of the best known works of fiction in the English language. It was the inspiration -- and more -- for Francis Ford Coppola’s amazing 1979, Apocalypse Now starring a brilliant but off-kilter Marlon Brando and a beautifully sweaty Martin Sheen. The book itself is at once darkly luminous and disturbing. An

UK Indie Rushing Michael Jackson Biography to Press

2009-06-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

They’re probably not the only ones rushing a biography of pop prince Michael Jackson to press. However U.K. independent publisher, John Blake, is getting some ink just days after the pop star died in Los Angeles on Thursday. From The Bookseller:Michael Jackson -- King of Pop: 1958-2009 is being written by Emily Herbert, a long-time fan of Jackson, who has interviewed him “on several occasions” in

Author Snapshot: Clea Simon

2009-06-26T05:19:00.000-07:00

We engage with the work of the authors we love on many levels. In the case of fiction, that engagement is often about a careful blend of passion and voice. In non-fiction, it seems to me it’s about heart and sincere understanding of the material under study. It’s why the authors who excel at both fiction and non are rare. Those four things -- passion, skill, heart and research -- are unlikely to

“The Day the 70s Died”

2009-06-26T00:05:00.000-07:00

Will June 25th be remembered as the day the 70s died? That’s what some social-media mavens were asking yesterday when two 1970s pop-culture icons passed away within hours of each other.Former Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett, 62, died of complications resulting from the cancer she had been publicly battling for some time, while 1970s child star -- and publicly off-kilter adult -- Michael

Holden Losing His Hold?

2009-06-25T17:35:00.000-07:00

We have been keeping track on this page (see here, here, and here) of efforts to publish 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, a takeoff on J.D. Salinger’s best-selling novel, Catcher in the Rye. But as The New York Times observes, Salinger’s teenage protagonist, Holden Caulfield, “may have bigger problems than the insults of irreverent parodists and other ‘phonies,’ as Holden would put it.”

Review: A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert

2009-06-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

Today in January Magazine’s fiction section, Diane Leach looks at A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert. Says Leach:Dorothy Trevor Townsend is starving herself to death. Her cause is not anorexia, but suffrage. The year is 1914, and though a war is on, the brilliant Townsend is doing her best to make a statement, to be heard of above the horrible din of war. She is willing to die for her

New in Paperback: Close by Martina Cole

2009-06-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that there is almost no chance that North American readers will cotton to Close (Grand Central), UK megaseller Martina Cole’s official U.S. debut. It’s not that Close is bad. In fact, it isn’t. It’s just very, very different.On this side of the pond, we are used to a certain amount of polish and finish. If we encounter a run-on sentence or a dropped semicolon, we head to a writing

New This Month: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton

2009-06-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

Alain de Botton is, first and foremost, a philosopher. Just a few months shy of his 40th birthday, de Botton is perhaps one of the most important philosophers alive today. Arguably, of course. But then, that’s part of the point of philosophy, is it not? Everything we see isn’t always what it seems and where we look is not necessarily where what is searched for will be found. Things like that.

Excerpt: Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton

2009-06-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Horse Soldiers (Scribner) is the dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban:Trouble came in the night, riding out of the dust and the darkness. Trouble rolled past the refugee camp, past the tattered tents shuddering in the moonlight, the lone cry of a baby driving high into the sky,

Cookbooks: Dad’s Awesome Grilling Book by Bob Sloan

2009-06-20T04:30:00.000-07:00

Why has our culture seemingly gone out of its way to link cooking outdoors over flaming coals with men? When looked at very carefully what, truly, does one have to do with the other? Something primal, perhaps? Something hunter to a woman’s gatherer? In his reasonably impressive new Dad’s Awesome Grilling Book (Chronicle Books) award-winning food writer Bob Sloan tries to sum things up.Like so

Biography: We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill

2009-06-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

When a biography is very good and is also big and muscular, it’s common to compare the book to a novel. And what makes such a comparison valid? Certainly not -- or hopefully not -- a strong element of fabrication. Rather, how the book impacts the reader draws compare. A very good biography -- well researched, written with passion and competence, on a subject worthy of close examination -- will

Fiction: Fishing for Bacon by Michael Davie

2009-06-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

I’m beginning to think that 2009 might well be remembered as the year that potential Canadian YA masterworks got lost in the waterfall of mainstream fiction.First there was Alan Bradley’s lively but clearly juvenile The Sweetness of the Bottom the Pie (Doubleday Canada). Now comes Calgarian Michael Davies’ cheerfully abrupt Fishing for Bacon (Newest Press). The book features fresh-from-high

Fast Takes…

2009-06-19T09:00:00.001-07:00

Here are some of the things we’ve been microblogging about over the last week or so.• Today is Salman Rushdie’s birthday. Here’s the interview we did with him back in 2002. An interesting side note: January art director, David Middleton, did a photo shoot with Rushdie with predictably smashing results. And one of the unexpected results: Middleton’s Rushdie images continue to be among the top

Art & Culture: The Artist’s Mother, introduction by Judith Thurman

2009-06-18T05:30:00.000-07:00

Like exhibitions loosely grouped around a theme, books with a themed core seem to come in one of two categories. They’re either lame excuses to connect that which probably shouldn’t have been connected in the first place, or wonderful triumphs that have us looking at the topic in a new way.In almost every regard, The Artist’s Mother (Overlook) falls into the latter camp. “Maternal love takes many

Doctorow’s Little Brother Optioned for film

2009-06-18T02:45:00.000-07:00

Author Cory Doctorow has announced that his vastly entertaining young adult novel Little Brother (Tor Teen) has been optioned for film.Early this morning, Doctorow blogged that “Don Murphy, producer of such films as Natural Born Killers and From Hell, has bought a film option on Little Brother. I’ve talked it over with Don and feel confident that if he makes the movie that he’ll do it justice --

Non-Fiction: Squirrels of North America by Tamara Eder

2009-06-18T00:05:00.000-07:00

At first blush, Squirrels of North America (Lone Pine) sounds almost ridiculously esoteric. Squirrels. In North America. Super specific and about a topic that -- let’s face it -- most of us give little thought. (ie: squirrels.) However, not long after my initial scoff, I spent an enchanted hour or so lost in the pages of what is essentially a field guide. That fascination is understandable and to