Shakespeare, Virgil and Homer

It's always interesting to see what pop culture and commercial interests do with literary works and writers. I don't know what comment to make on the pig in Shakespeare, Ontario, other than to say there is also a Shakespeare Auto Repair Shop. But this Shakespeare is the name of a town, near Stratford, Ontario, where Shakespeare is indeed performed on the stage. Also, in the Niagara area, there are towns called Virgil and Homer. Virgil, appropriately, is in wine country. Long in decline, Homer now has the Garden City Skyway above it, carrying the Queen Elizabeth Way over the Welland Canal. On the ground in Homer is a cemetery, chocolate store, auto parts factory, and a gentlemen's club. There are also other cities and towns: Milton, Ontario (after the great poet?); Vaughan, Ontario (after the poet Henry Vaughan?); and Atwood, Ontario, named after the poet/fiction writer Margaret....

Comic book writer Liu Hsin-Chin

I have now been in Taiwan for the last three weeks, accompanying my wife Li-Huei, who is visiting her father. (He is having eye surgery.) We visited Hsinchu, famous for its high tech industries. A theme park along an old Japanese narrow-gage rail line includes a museum/restaurant dedicated to comic book writer 劉興欽, Liu Hsin-Chin. In the photo my wife is with one of his cartoon characters. The rail line gave access to the trees in the mountains for lumber during the Japanese colonial period, 1895-1945.
Late May and early June in Taiwan--hot, hot, hot. Love it.

Recommended Website: Goodreads

Recently, I joined Goodreads.Com where you can set up your own page, much like Facebook or MySpace. There I list the books I have read and I am currently reading. Looking for friends is easy: you check what they are reading and what books you have in common. Also on the website are many authors, for example Neil Gaiman. I have already gain librarian status and author status.

My book, Jon Hart: Six Tales of the Supernatural, is now listed on Amazon.Com.

At St. Catharines Marina

Spring is near. Spent some time Sunday afternoon shooting seagulls in flight.

John Lennon Biography

Currently I am reading John Lennon, the Life, a big, 800-page-plus biography by Philip Norman. A very detailed and fascinating book, published in 2008.

I took the above photo last March in Taichung, Taiwan, a sketch of Lennon on a utility box sitting near one of the water-control canals in that city.

NOTE: I have made available my books Jon Hart and The Vice Principal as free downloads at Lulu.com. They can now be read without charge in pdf format.
http://stores.lulu.com/northdoorbooks

December Reading

Here are three books I read this month:

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden tells the story of two Cree Indians who volunteer for the Canadian Army. With shooting skills obtained in the Northern Ontario bush, they become snipers in trench warfare during WWI.

Mafiaboy by Michael Calce with Craig Siverman is the story of a fifteen-year-old living in the suburbs of Montreal, who launches DOS (denial of service) attacks on CNN, Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon in early 2000. The RCMP, with the help of the FBI, arrest him.

Rawi Hage

Cockroach by Rawi Hage is set in the immigrant communities of downtown Montreal. A restaurant busboy, from the Middle East, tells a story with echoes of Kafka's "Metamorphosis", Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers, and Dostoevksy's Notes from the Underground.

Links:
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/
http://mafiaboybook.com/
http://www.anansi.ca/authors.cfm?author_id=441

Recent Movies

Here is a list of movies I've seen recently (October & November):
Fallen Idol (1948) director Carol Reed - based on story my Graham Greene
The Bourne Supremacy (2004) - from novel by Robert Ludlum
Bryon (2003) d. Julian Farino - biography of the poet
Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (2005) d. Lian Lunson - tribute concert to the poet
Sylvia (2003) d. Christine Jeffs - biography based on the lives of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Juno (2007) d. Jason Reitman (Canadian) - written by Diablo Cody
Shakespeare Wallah (1965) d. James Ivory - screenplay was a collaboration of James Ivory and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
A History of Violence (2006) d. David Cronenberg (Canadian) - based on graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, screenplay Josh Olson (for which he nominated for an Oscar for best adapted screenplay).

A further note on Cronenberg's History: I'm tempted to call it a remake of his movie The Dead Zone (1983), not only because he uses small Ontario towns and masks them as American. The plots are similar: man has a secret and must kill his evil twin to survive. Viggo Mortensen = Christopher Walken (and they both have a limp in the movie). William Hurt = Martin Sheen.

See my website for a list of movies seen and books read by me.