Tolerance of Weirdness: Spider Robinson on Allan Gregg at TVO

Spider Robinson on the Allen Gregg at TVO
This 25 minute clip was first shown on TV Ontario in April 1999.




from my Index to Canadian Fiction

Spider ROBINSON (b. 1948, New York City)
      Telempath (1976) novel
      Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) novel
      Stardance (1979) with Jeanne Robinson novel
      Antinomy (1980) short fiction
      Time Travelers Strictly Cash (1981) short fiction
      Mindkiller (1982) novel
      Melancholy Elephants (1984) short fiction
      Night of Power (1985) novel
     Callahan's Secret (1986) novel
     Time Pressure (1987) novel
     Callahan's Lady (1989) novel
     True Minds (1990) short fiction
     Starseed (1991) with Jeanne Robinson novel
     Lady Slings the Booze (1992) novel
     The Callahan Touch (1993) novel
     Starmind (1995) with Jeanne Robinson novel
     Callahan's Legacy (1996) novel
     Lifehouse (1997) novel
     User Friendly (1998) short fiction
     Callahan's Key (2000) novel
     The Free Lunch (2001) novel
     By Any Other Name (2001) short fiction
     God Is an Iron and Other Stories (2002) short fiction
     Callahan's Con (2003) novel
     Very Bad Deaths (2004) novel
     Variable Star (2006) with Robert A. Heinlein novel
     Very Hard Choices (2008) novel
     other:
     The Best of All Possible Worlds (1980) anthology, ed.

See Allen Gregg in Converstion.
See Spider Robinson homepage

Who reads young adult books?

An interesting article in the G&M today.
How Harry Potter rewrote the book on reading, in which we learn that in 2009 70% of readers of young adult books were over 18. Conjure up an image of a middle-age man reading Nancy Drew and the Case of the Twin Teddy Bears.

.
Apparently, these 18 plussers show no shame in buying or reading these things.

Room and the Road

After I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road I noticed the similarities with another novel I've read this year, Emma Donoghue's Room. Both authors tell us in interviews that the novels were inspired by their own children.

see interview with author Cormac McCarth on Oprah:
http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Oprahs-Exclusive-Interview-with-Cormac-McCarthy-Video

see also Emma Donoghue's interviews here:
http://www.emmadonoghue.com/samples.htm

THE RAGE OF INGRID MONK, a novel

I have just published my first novel and fourth book of fiction.
View details at the home page of North Door Books.

Consumption by Kevin Patterson

notes on

I raced through this book enjoying it very much. It provides an alternate history and narrative about the far north with interesting characters and setting. It is a tale of the Inuit being hurled into the 20th century, including the way civilization and affluence makes us sick. (Consumption is a disease and it is also a way of life--consumer society, illegal drugs, finding in food in the Arctic.) The Inuit are coming in off the land and living in small communities. Also a murder mystery.

Patterson's nonfiction also looks interesting.

http://www.randomhouse.ca/author/results.pperl?authorid=23352

born in Northern Ontario in 1964, now lives in B.C.
medical school U. of Manitoba
-worked as a doctor in the far north and in British Columbia
- now living on Saltspring Island off the east coast of Vancouver Island, just north of Victoria
-worked as a doctor in the Inuit hamlets of the west coast of Hudson Bay since 1994

reviews:

http://theliteraryword.blogspot.com/2007/08/consumption-by-kevin-patterson.html

http://www.cbc.ca/books/booksandauthors/2010/10/country-of-cold.html

interviews:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEptZ05MjTw

http://www.canadianliving.com/life/community/interview_with_author_kevin_patterson.php

http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/1475/Kevin-Patterson

Articles, Mother Jones

http://motherjones.com/politics/2003/03/patient-predator

http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/06/talk-me-my-father-frontline-medicine-afghanistan

Government and Support for the Arts

A few articles on government support of the arts.

Harper government, enemy of the arts?By Jamie Portman, Postmedia News April 26, 2011 3:01 PM

Platform Primer: Arts and Culture
By Patrick Metzger on April 25, 2011 3:30 PM torontoist.com

'Wrecking Ball' thrusts politics into arts spotlight
CBC News Posted: Apr 25, 2011 5:27 PM ET

Reading in the News - Literary Reviews, etc.

Kevin Brockmeier (b. 1972, Little Rock, Arkinsas) new novel The Illumination reviewed in the Globe & Mail by Matt Kavanagh.
Six characters in search of a connection
other books by Brockmeier:
* Things That Fall from the Sky (2002) stories
* The View From The Seventh Layer (2008) stories
* The Truth About Celia (2003) novel
* The Brief History of the Dead (2006) novel

Mark Bernstein on "short press runs and electronic books" and Jo Walton's new book Among Others, article: The Other Book Revolution in the Atlantic. See also Mothers & Magic in G&M.

Luminato Announces 2011 Literature and Illuminations Programs
Toronto's Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity, ten days in June 2011.
Will include writers such as Randa Jarrar, Mohammad Hassan Alwan, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeanette Winterson, Ann Patchett, Hanan al-Shaykh, Geraldine Brooks, Leila Aboulela, Elizabeth Hay, Maxine Hong Kingston, Miriam Toews.
"For 10 extraordinary days in June, Toronto’s stages, streets, and public spaces are illuminated with arts and creativity. Luminato is an annual multi-disciplinary celebration of theatre, dance, music, literature, food, visual arts, fashion, film, and more."

Expresso Book Machine

Article in Globe & Mail about a small bookstore in N.B. which prints on demand between 30 to 100 books a day. Article talks about these machines becoming popular. Now only some university libraries have them in North America. I used one printer here in Taiwan to print my own book in copies of 5 for less that $5 CDN each.
Is this contraption (still) the future of publishing?
Hannah Sung

Another article in G&M talks about Cdn Government support of book publishing in Canada. Is a system of small publishers better than one dominated by the large publishers?
Our Time to Lead
Supporting CanLit means shelving our protectionist policy
JOHN BARBER

How do EBMs work?
See this YouTube video at OnDemandBooks website:

Notes on ebooks and ebook readers

CNN's Amy Gahran tells us Why Amazon would be smart to give away the Kindle

Wired Magazine's Charlie Sorrel tells us How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

Charles Taylor Prize 2011

The five finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize were announced January 11, 2011.
The prize is "awarded to the author whose book best combines a superb command of the English language, an elegance of style, and a subtlety of thought and perception," according to the Taylor Prize website.

http://www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca/

Previous winners:

2000--Wayne Johnston for Baltimore’s Mansion, published by Knopf Canada;
2002--Carol Shields for Jane Austen, published by Penguin Books Canada;
2004--Isabel Huggan for Belonging: Home Away From Home;
2005--Charles Montgomery for The Last Heathen: Encounters With Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia, published by Douglas & McIntyre;
2006--J. B. MacKinnon for Dead Man in Paradise, published by Douglas & McIntyre;
2007--Rudy Wiebe for Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, published by Knopf Canada;
2008--Richard Gwyn for John A.: The Man Who Made Us, The Life and Times of John A. Macdonald, Volume One: 1815 – 1816, published by Random House Canada;
2009--Tim Cook for Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917 – 1918, Volume Two, published by Viking Canada Canada.

Finalist for 2010:
1] Stevie Cameron for On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women, published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada;
2] Charles Foran for Mordecai: The Life & Times, published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada;
3] Ross King for Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, published by Douglas & McIntyre/ McMichael Canadian Art Collection;
4] George Sipos for The Geography of Arrival: A Memoir, published by Gaspereau Press;
5] Merrily Weisbord for The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Charles B. P. Taylor (1935-1997) was a Canadian-born journalist with the Globe & Mail. His books include:
Reporter in Red China (1966)
Snow Job : Canada, the United States and Vietnam 1954 to 1973 (1974)
China Hands : The Globe and Mail Peking (editor) (1984)
Six Journeys: A Canadian Pattern (1977) [Biographical portraits of Scott Symons, James Houston, Emily Carr, Herbert Norman, Bishop William White, and Brigadier James Sutherland Brown.]