King Leary - Paul Quarrington

Manages to turn hockey, a topic so mundane and familiar to Canadians that we can smell it in our sweat, into a metaphor for magic. As a character King Leary skates alongside other great Canadian literary figures (Duddy Kravtiz, Anne of Green Gables)  and as a novel King Leary should body check a few stodgy works that are taught in classrooms. There are some tried and true concepts here - the small town boy who only knows hockey, the rich business man who ruthlessly operates the team with only profit in mind, the bitter and alcoholic sports writer, the destined to die in a hotel room player  - that Quarrington weaves into something new and wonderful. A classic.

Remainder - Tom McCarthy

Moves through the world in supreme control, a remarkable feat for a first novel, with hardly a misused word. It builds to the only ending that makes sense, a satisfying conclusion to a treatise on memory, identity and the need to control the world around us that reads like a novel.

Tokyo, My Everest - Gabrielle Bauer

The issue about reading a story about something similar to what you went through is the tendency to draw comparisons to your own experiences. Often, because the subject matter is so familiar, the story comes up lacking, and not in any particular deficiency in the story, but because your experience is different and more real.  This was somewhat the case with Tokyo, My Everest, the story of a 30-something Canadian woman who moves to Tokyo to teach English and figure out what to do with her life. 

Her experiences are typical to the newbie in Japan - getting to know the subway system, overcoming the language barrier, dealing with non-Japanese who treat the country as a party palace.  The author is one of those people who come to Japan to find the 'real' Japan - kimonos and temples and tea ceremonies - the kind of person I tried to avoid in my own time in Japan. Living in a big city, riding the subway and eating convenience store food heated in a microwave has the same claim to legitimacy as does hiking Mt. Fuji or watching Noh. I always bristled at this idea of a 'real' version of a country (Do Japanese come to Canada in search of the real Canada, with images of snowy tundras and beavers in their minds?)

Curious about Japanese men, the author finally finds one that meets her specifications. The only problem is that he's cloaked himself in secrecy as well as a rigid schedule that he never wants to veer from, which causes friction in their relationship that eventually leads to its demise. Heart-broken, the author leaves Tokyo, having been there for less than year.

Downtown Owl - Chuck Klosterman

Wanting to like this book, because I like his writing on music and pop culture (Sex, Death and Cocoa Puffs, IV) I tried to overlook the flaws in this book, but by the time the ending comes (slapped on) my patience had waned. Klosterman can write a good piece on a Guns'N'Roses cover band or Latinos who love Morrissey, but his journalistic/ironic detachment isn't suited to creating characters the reader needs to care about, or at least be mildly interested in, especially given the ending.  There are moments when the  divergences into pop culture and commentary achieve a level of near brilliance, but this novel would have worked better as a faux-memoir or having  Klosterman  embedded in a small North Dakota town an report from the ground.

Broadsides - Mordecai Richler

A collection of reviews, journal entries and what can only be called filler, released after what I consider to be his best book, Solomon Gursky Was Here. Even if it feels like a publishing obligation, it still works - the Richler style applied to sex manuals, vapid actresses and writing.  The last piece, a collection of journal entries, is the best piece, and for fans, you can see Richler's mind already focusing on his next (and final book) Barney's Version. At his most shallow he's still better than many others, as this collection proves, and he's been missed.

King, Queen, Knave - Nabokov

An early one from an old master, a too familiar plot (ambitious wife with a young lover plots to kill wealthy husband) is rendered with an expert's touch. Nabokov re-worked the translation of this novel in the 1960's, injecting the atmosphere with the spectre of Nazism and a curious sub-plot involving automatons. Moves between stream-of-consciousness, imagination, perception and drama and an ending that takes some time to get there but surprises in the end.

Famous Authors And Their Typewriters

 When I was teaching in Japan, I taught kids class that used a textbook from the early 90's that had picture cards showing a secretary (a woman) using a typewriter. When I asked the 8 and 9 year olds what this was (pointing to the typewriter) they gave me blank stares until one boy said "Computer?"
I explained what a typewriter was - you fed paper into the top and it printed the letters directly onto the paper and if you made a mistake you had to white it out - and they all looked at me as I were mad.

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