This Cake Is For The Party - Sarah Selecky

10 stories, remarkable for being even in their distribution of style, wit and a high degree of writing. All are about loss, and what comes before and what comes after.  The most skillful is the last in the collection, One Thousand Wax Buddhas, which plays with narrative structure and first-person perspective to tell the story of a candle-maker and his mentally ill wife. Hints of Munroe, suggestions of Carver, but Selecky makes these stories her own.

True Grit - Charles Portis

It's always difficult reading a book after seeing a movie - the comparisons, either way, never hold up. In this case, however, the book and movie (both versions) can be treated as separate artifacts. In the novel, it's Mattie who narrates from the vantage point of years later. She seeks the man who killed her father and hires Rooster Cogburn - oh, I'm sure you've seen the movie. What separates the book from the movie is the murky morality - Mattie states she wants to capture the man who killed her father, but hires the Marshall known for killing to do it, I man who plans on shooting bandits in the back. The man who kills her father expresses remorse over the action. Of course the movie makes the morality clearer, but the style alone makes this a worthwhile read.

Author on Author Verbal Violence

Is there anyone better to insult an author than another author?

9. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac

“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

8. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger

“I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?”

From Flavorwire

No Such Thing As A Contemporary Novel?

Russell Smith on Graham's Swift essay that claims that there is no such thing as a contemporary novel:

"His argument is simple and undeniable: As soon as something’s written and published it is about the past. Novels take years to write, so “… the ‘now’ with which they begin will be defunct by the time they’re finished.” And the hippest of new novels will look very dated in a couple of years. He points out that many of our favourite novels from the 19th century are actually not about their own time but are set many years previous to their writing: War and Peace, for example, was written in the 1860s but set during the Napoleonic wars, about 50 years earlier. The lag seems immaterial to us now."


Globe and Mail

The 100 Greatest Non-Fiction Books

The Guardian lists the 100 Greatest Non-Fiction books of all time.

Rubber Balls and Liquor - Gilbert Gotfried

There are some laughs in this memoir, but the whole endeavor feels obligatory. All the signposts of the typical comedic memoir are here - precocious childhood, awkward teenage years, followed by grinding it out on the stand-up circuit. More stories about that scene would have added more meat to this limp broth. In his comedy he is fearless, but here he is like a meaner version of Paul Reiser.

The Age of Wonder - Richard Holmes

Puts to the rest the notion that the Romantic era was filled with poets and not scientists with a passion and enthusiasm one doesn't usually read in books about science. Focusing on Joseph Banks, Humphrey Davy and William Hershel, the book at times reads like a thriller. A thriller that informs - the balloon flight mania of the time is particularly engaging, as Banks' journey to Fiji.