…nothing short of.

I love being a Teen Librarian.

“The increase in violent crime in São Paulo since the mid-1980s generated fear and a series of new strategies of protection and reaction, of which the building of walls is the most emblematic. Both symbolically and materially, these strategies operate by marking differences, imposing partitions and distances, building walls, multiplying rules of avoidance and exclusion, and restricting movement.”

- Teresa Caldeira, from the fantastic/fantastically depressing City of Walls

Let’s show off our horrifyingly short lives~
Rate mine thumbs up, high five & plus nine
out of ten. wanna be my friend?
not in real life–just pretend.
just a trend, an unsanguine,
ingenuine blend of amens.
Instead of facebook,
why don’t we face books?
Why don’t we erase all traces of fake places’ cyberspace hooks?
Instead of grace, we chased mistakes with pics mistook;
the myspace race, disgraced, save for our vacant looks.

A. Colin Wright’s first novel, Sardinian Silver, was a finalist in the 2009 Indie Awards. It received an honorary mention in the fiction category of the San Francisco Book Festival and was one of two runners-up in the fiction category of the New York Book Festival. It has recently won a Pinnacle Books Award for the best fiction.

Shelagh: Please tell us a little about yourself, Colin.

Colin: I was born in Chelmsford, Essex, England. After serving as a linguist in the British Royal Air Force (learning Russian), I attended Cambridge University, where I earned M.A and Ph.D degrees. In 1962 I lived for six months in Sassari, Sardinia, followed the next year by a longer period in Reggio Calabria. I speak five languages reasonably fluently, and can stumble along in two more. In 1964, after a year’s study at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), I was appointed professor of Russian at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. I remained at Queen’s until retirement in 1999 and still reside in Kingston. I am married and have two grown sons.

Shelagh: When did the writing bug bite, and in what genre(s)?

Colin: At a relatively early age, I read a book on English history from the local children’s library. I decided to dramatize the kings of England, using paper cut-outs as puppets. The project didn’t get very far, but I still have a few pages of elementary dialogue, such as William II dying by an arrow in the New Forest, with him falling off his horse and saying “Oh blow!”

I was also fascinated by sailing ships and wrote the following at the age of six:

ST. MARIA
By A.C. Wright
IT IS TROOY BOAT BOOK
Aorgust 28th 1944
St. Maria
CHAPTER 1
The St. Maria was made on janyouvery 8th 1931. Made by W. Higham. The St. Maria was the ferst saling ship that was made by W. Higham.
CHAPTER 2
The St. Maria has got two booms like all ships have. One is a sall boom and the other is an orderry boom that is rearly calld the latean boom.
CHAPTER 3
The St. Maria has got fuor salls rearly five salls becools of the one on the sall boom.

Well, you get the idea.

And then … when I was young I enjoyed Enid Blyton’s “adventure” series (Castle of Adventure, etc.) and I remember wondering what it would be like to write a book: looking at one paragraph and thinking how difficult it would be to produce so many words. I even copied it down to see what it would look like.

Shelagh: When you started writing, what goals did you want to accomplish? Is there a message you want readers to grasp?

Colin: Encouraged by a teacher at grammar school in England, I just wanted to write, trying short stories — which were so terrible that I haven’t the courage to reread them. Then, when I was teaching at University, I published academic articles on Russian and comparative literature, including a major book on Mikhail Bulgakov. But I still wrote novels, short stories and plays.

In my fiction, the idea of a message only came later, but for me it is essential. I am interested in “what life is all about” — in a serious, religious sense — although combined with a good story.

Shelagh: Briefly tell us about your latest book.

Colin: My first published novel is Sardinian Silver. An English tourist representative in Sardinia seeks a Sard girl-friend, but is frustrated by local attitudes, with “continental” freedoms considered “immoral.” Eventually he finds a girl who’s unaccepted at home, but she falls for his friend, an introspective lawyer. Among others, he meets a tempestuous local maid, a pedantically Catholic schoolteacher and a flamboyant American woman. Included, of course, are many of my own reflections about life.

Shelagh: What’s the hook for the book?

Colin: Whether the young man hero will finally find love.

Shelagh: How do you develop characters? Setting?

Colin: In a sense, both were already given. In Sardinia and elsewhere I met a whole range of characters, whom then I developed in my own (fictitious) way. Sardinia itself was fascinating. My approach is similar in my other works: starting with people and places I find interesting.

Shelagh: Who’s the most unusual/most likeable character?

Colin: Other than my three major protagonists, I’d have to say Isabelle, the crazy American who constantly offends local susceptibilities.

Shelagh: Do you have specific techniques to help you maintain the course of the plot?

Colin: I wish I did. Plot is where I have most difficulties, although in the case of Sardinian Silver the actual events of my time there helped.

Shelagh: Do you have a specific writing style?

Colin: I aim for precision and accuracy, with no superfluous words, so I spend a great deal of time editing. However, I sometimes enjoy fantasy and experimentation, including “unreliable narrators,” particularly in my stories. I vary my POV according to what seems to work best. Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses (which I didn’t much like) taught me that one can do absolutely anything in a novel if one can discover how.

Shelagh: How does your environment/upbringing color your writing?

Colin: There was an insistence at my school on good grammar. Then the study at university of great Russian, German and French literature was a strong influence.

Shelagh: Share the best review (or a portion) that you’ve even had.

Colin: “It’s a fantastic short read, to tell you the truth, like discovering a lost Graham Greene story… Wright takes his time here with his story, making plot a dim second to the mere establishment of time and place and mood, gently exploring the back alleys and side daytrips of this remarkable island with a kind of grace and ease that only comes with maturity. And in this, astute readers might be reminded as well of the “Alexandria Quartet” by Lawrence Durrell … This novel is without a doubt as good as one of Graham Greene’s minor works, and in fact could easily be mistaken for some forgotten Greene tale.”

Shelagh: What are your current projects?

Colin: To publish my short stories as a collection; then my somewhat fantastic long novel Veronica’s Papers; to get some of my plays performed professionally; and to complete another novel I’ve been having problems with, set in post-war Berlin. Finally, to publish a non-fiction book based on some of my articles on what I personally believe about God and life.

Shelagh: Where can folks learn more about your books and events?

Colin: For my novel, see www.sardiniansilver.com. For my career in general, see www.acolinwright.ca. And for a selection of some of my stories plus articles and literary blogs, see www.authorsden.com/acolinwright.

Your irascible kid will be ordered to get psychiatric treatments; (Mar. 9, 2010)

            Any single behavior of yours has now a psychological label attached to it.  An irascible kid is diagnosed “humor deregulation with dysphory”; an eccentric adolescent is treated for “syndrome of psychotic risk”; and if you are into much sex activities then you are labeled “hypersexual troubled person”

            A few expert psychiatrists of the American Psychiatry Association (APA) have been efficaciously working for a decade on categorizing and revisiting the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).  The proposed revisions are published on the APA site www.dsm5.org are opened for comments till April 20, 2010.  The definitive version DSM-V is due on May 2013. Comments, validation studies, complementary evaluations, and the vote of the administration council of APA will deliver the final acceptance decision of this version.

            Mental illnesses are intrinsically related to family and community supports, health structures, and mental customs in treatments; all these factors are irrelevant to multinational pharmaceutical companies with interest to globalize definitions of psychiatric syndromes and treatments.

            Based on globalize diagnostics and criteria, individuals will be considered suffering from mental troubles, prescribed standardized psychotrops, and health insurance coverage encouraged.  The president of APA, Alan Schatzberg, said “The DSM may have incidences on the way individuals perceive others and perceive themselves. It influences the nature of research and their methodologies.  There are repercussions in justices, industries, and public health.”

            There is no doubt that millions of people will be taking pills that were not necessary in many societies in the first place; they will suffer secondary effects that are more dangerous and harmful than the original ailments. Worse, the revised DSM-V will be imposed globally to include all societies as the definitive Psychiatric Bible. APA will enjoy hegemony in that troubled field.

            For example, a “depressed” Nigerian would say he has burning in the head; a Chinese would say he has pain in the shoulders or stomach; a Salvadorian would claim to have sensation of intense corporal heat.  Ethan Watters published “Crazy like Us: The globalization of the American Psyche”. There is a terrifying global tendency to de-humanizing people by imposing unified cultural outlooks.

            Western, more specifically US, repertory of mental symptoms and treatments is trying to homogenize it globally, as if there are no specificities to various societies differing vastly from Western concepts of mental illness.  Since it is Western States that are contributing mostly to natural disasters and catastrophes, then the US medical teams have disseminated their diagnostics related to post-traumatic ailments.

            Multinational pharmaceutical industries are heavily lobbying to redefining mental symptoms so that they sell medical pills that DSM might be recommending, especially allowing public health institutions and health insurance to cover the mental disorders expenses.

This book is part of the BBC’s Big Read – Top 100 books.

One is never too old to read children’s books. I, for one, love children’s books and movies. I enjoy reading comics and watching cartoons. It had been so long since I read a kids’ book, that I greedily lapped up Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and enjoyed every word and letter.

Mary Lennox, who is living in India with her parents, is sent to England to live with her maternal uncle after her parents die because of cholera. As a child, she is unhealthy, stubborn and queer. Her uncle, Mr. Craven, is another queer man who keeps to himself and avoids meeting anyone. His house has as many as hundreds of rooms, of which many are kept closed and are unused. Mary hears a story of how Mrs. Craven died after she fell from a tree in her garden and how Mr. Craven hates the garden for it and hence has kept it locked. He has buried the key and no one has entered this garden for ten years. Mary is thrilled with this idea of a secret garden and wants to see what is in it.

While the plot is kiddish, the message the book conveys is not. The message that runs parallely along the story is that one needs to eat well and play well to be healthy. A main part of the story is about how a sick, unhealthy child learns to enjoy the life around. Nature has a strong presence in the book. Mary owes her health to her secret garden where as she plants the flowers, she grows along with the plants. Dickon, a country lad, is friends with all the wild animals and can even speak to a robin. If we all can learn to enjoy and respect the nature around us, we will have a healthier and a better life. The book is not patronizing. There are no messages passed on as wisdom. One just reads the story and realizes all these. After I finished reading this book, I couldn’t help but smile and say to myself  “Isn’t life beautiful?”

It is only right that the book talks about enjoying little things in life. Burnett, who was born in a poor family, knows what are the important things in life. Materialistic things like clothes, money, wealth and grandeur are things that Burnett feels are useless and hence get no mention in the book at all.

This is one of the rare books which cater to minds of children and adults alike. Didn’t someone say there is a child residing in everybody’s heart? It is very difficult to try and please a variety of audience, but Burnett manages it with such ease. One can treat this book as a kids’ book as well as a serious book which preaches ways of leading a happy life. No matter how you want to take it, it’s a book worth reading.

One of my favorite things about being unemployed
(besides the choosing between which pajama pants to wear, oh rapture)
is the free time to read read read read read.

I love books, people.

When I lost my job in August, I started haunting the Inglewood library–
just went through the stacks,
grabbing classics,
authors I love,
authors I’ve never heard of,
titles that just grabbed my attention…

It’s lovely, really.

I haven’t explored the Sierra Madre library yet,
mostly because Laura’s books have been around.

But….she’s moving out. To get all MARRIED. And STUFF.
And her BOOKS,
the BOOKS that I haven’t gotten my HANDS ON YET?

They’re going WITH HER.

LauraJane.

What are you thinking?!?

So, Sierra Madre Library?
Pasadena Library?

Watch out.

I’m coming, and I’m taking your good fiction with me.

***********

I’ve been keeping a semi-regular list of books I’ve read since August–
Have you read any of these? What were your impressions or criticisms?

1) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith

Sadder than I expected. Blunter than I expected. Well-written. A good time capsule of New York before World War II.

2) A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley

Hi, Jane, your bitterness against Christianity is showing…

3) A Pale View of Hills, Kazou Ishiguro

4) An Artist of the Floating World, “”

5) The Promise, Chaim Potok

6) The Gift of Asher Lev, “”

7) A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe

“Bonfire of the Vanities” is a much better version of a similar story; felt like Wolfe was repeating himself in this novel. However, it is a still intriguing condemnation of the current meritocracy and those who live in it.

8 ) O. Henry Memorial Award Short Story Collection

9) Ya-Yas in Bloom, Rebecca Wells

10) Pandora, Anne Rice

11) Dance, Dance, Dance, Murakami

12) Sputnik Sweetheart, “”

13) The Inimitable Jeeves, PG Wodehouse

14) Darkness at Pemberly, Daphne DuMaurier

15) The King’s General, “”

16) The Glassblowers, “”

17) Classics of the Macabre, “”

18) Great Stories of Mystery and Suspense, ed. Reader’s Digest, 1981

19) The Optimist’s Daughter, Eudora Welty

20) 55 Short Stories from the New Yorker, 1940-1950

21) Rising Sun, Michael Crichton

22) Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya

23) Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisnero

24) Duo & Le Toutounier, Colette

25) The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimoore Cooper

Great adventure, lousy prose. Telling someone to duck should not take a paragraph of speech.

26) Daughter of Fortune, Isabelle Allende

27) Falling Angels, Tracy Chevalier

28) The Adventures of Robin Hood, Creswick

29) Carrie, Stephen King

Got him published for a reason. Powerful, horrifying, and sad.

30) The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon, “”

31) A Live Coal in the Sea, Madeline L’Engle

32) A Severed Wasp, “”

33) Pearl, Tabitha King

34) Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackery

35) Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon

Ugh. BOO. Who decided that Pynchon is God’s gift to America? His prose is dreadful, his characters floppily nonsensical, and his plot fails to take off. Ever. Yuck.

36) Tortilla Flat, John Steinbeck

Oh, Steinbeck. You’re so much better when you’re not writing about drunks.

37) Saving Fish from Drowning, Amy Tan

38) The Bonesetter’s Daughter, “”

39) Outliers, Malcom Gladwell

40) Blink, “”

41) Stories Not for the Nervous, compiled by Alfred Hitchcock

42) Stories for Late at Night, “”

43) In the Woods, Tana French

44) The Likeness, “”

I have never wanted to enter a world so badly since reading the Narnia books when I was eight. Tana French is a genius.

45) The Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett

46) Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

47) Enchantment, Orson Scott Card

Ben bought this for me after a very disappointing viewing of Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox”. We discussed the need for good faerie tales, and for Anderson getting over his father-figure issues. “Enchantment” is a lovely retelling of “Sleeping Beauty”, set in Russia, complete with the eminently terrifying Baba Yaga.
I can’t wait to read this one to my children.

48) Peony, Pearl S. Buck

Interesting language—very formal in style. But I like it. It doesn’t have quite the same pull as “Good Earth”, but it’s still intriguing, and Buck is excellent at painting characters.

49) Disobedience, Naomi Alderman

Follows the return of an ex-Orthodox Jewish woman to her British hometown after the death of her Rav father. Was fantastic until Alderman decided to turn her book into an ode to lesbianism. Lost focus about halfway through novel—do we discuss Judaism? Feminism? British-ness? The Torah? A bit of a let-down, really.

50) Secrets of a Fire King, Kim Edwards

A lovely collection of short stories, but they are all tragedies. I appreciate Edwards’ iced-tea prose, but I do wish girlfriend had put a few bits of sunshine into these stories.

51) Velocity, Dean Koontz

Meh. The usual fare. Scary, but the fear never gave me nightmares. Two dimensional characters don’t have that penetrative ability.

52) Correlli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres

Lush. Gorgeous. Heartbreaking. The first third is a bit confusing, but de Bernieres pulls all of his loose threads together with a masterful hand. I had no idea that Italy invaded Greece during WWII; the love of a conqueror for the conquered is an old story, told beautifully here. I was a bit off-put by the ending; a tad abrupt, but still wonderful.

53) Passage to India, EM Forster

Makes me think I should read “Kim”. Oh, British colonialism, would we have any stories without you?

54) The Purity Myth, Jessica Valenti

Oh, good Lord. Valenti has a soapbox, and she’s not afraid to use it; namely, she feels that the “purity myth” is solely the fault of WASP men, and that blaming “the patriarchy” is an effective method of getting her point across. Some parts of the virginity debate do need to change—for example, girls should not have more weight placed on their purity than boys. Valenti misses her opportunity to have a honed argument—she chooses to bludgeon her reader with rants against men and purity balls (she reaaaaaally hates these) instead.

55) The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay

I love this book. I was first introduced to the film in 9th grade English by the marvelous Mr. Chessman, and I never forgot the beauty of Africa that was portrayed in it. The book follows the life of an English-speaking child in South Africa, just prior to Apartheid. The novel is sweeping, glorious, and hard.

56) Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver

Had a hard time with this book. It’s a continuation of the poignant “The Bean Trees”, which is not a bad plan, really, but I simply couldn’t agree with some of the philosophies in this novel; namely, that a Native American tribe has the right to take a child away from her adopted mom, simply to keep the child in that tribe. I’m just…not okay with that notion.

57) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

58) The Return of Sherlock Holmes, “”

59) Secret Windows, Stephen King

Stephen King is a good writer of fiction. He is an *astonishing* writer of essays. I love his looks into the psychology and art of writing; I love his critiques of other horror/sci-fi authors; he is concise, insightful, and brilliant in these essays (this book also includes one of the first stories he wrote when he was a kid…whoa).

60) The Red Tent, Anita Diamant

An interesting take on the very, very brief story of Dinah in Genesis 34. Diamant is a decent writer, and I love imagining the stories behind the undetailed Hebrew narrative of the Old Testament, but I do take issue with her blatant misrepresentation of Joseph in this book (there were *some* good men during that time period; there’s no sense in re-writing their characters in order to make the women of your narrative look better in comparison).
That said, still a good read.

Re-Reads
(at least, the ones I can remember…):

Emma, Mansfield Park, Persuasion; Jane Austen

Generation X, Shampoo Planet; Douglas Coupland

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare

Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt

Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

Anne of Green Gables Collection, LM Montgomery

This handbook, the first of its kind, is a detailed introduction to the numerous academic perspectives we can apply to the study of the internet as a political, social and communicative phenomenon. Covering both practical and theoretical angles, established researchers from around the world discuss everything: the foundations of internet research appear alongside chapters on understanding and analyzing current examples of online activities and artifacts. The material covers all continents and explores in depth subjects such as networked gaming, economics and the law.

The sheer scope and breadth of topics examined in this volume, which ranges from on-line communities to e-science via digital aesthetics, are evidence that in today’s world, internet research is a vibrant and mature field in which practitioners have long since stopped considering the internet as either an utopian or dystopian “new” space, but instead approach it as a medium that has become an integral part of our everyday culture and a natural mode of communication.

via International Handbook of Internet Research.

If festivals are all about drinking in new experiences, then the top of today’s literary cocktail list is the peach mule. Peach because today really was one out of the box, and mule because I walked half the city – but more of that later.

The programme really did have all the ingredients of my sassy and refreshing namesake. An effervescent Audrey Niffenegger fired up a big audience in her session, which would make her the ginger beer. The zesty sprig of mint was delivered in the form of Emily Perkins. The ice was the logic and intellectual rigour of ethical philosopher Peter Singer and financial journalist Road Oram. The the shot of alcohol came (of course) from the poets, particularly Geoff Cochrane, whose latest work is titled The worm in the tequila.

Strictly speaking a peach mule has peach vodka, but the overall result was spot on – intriguing, complex, subtle – just the right match for another stunning Wellington day. I’ll post in more detail on each session a bit later, but here are some of Wednesday’s highlights:

• Emily Perkins shared how hard it was to let go of some pieces of writing that just weren’t working – yet how liberating. Kind of like a break up, she said. “You still want to go back and read the old boyfriends postcards”. She also read an intriguing excerpt of her next book, and told us she was allergic to the “illuminating ending”.
• Peter Singer’s succinct description of the current global situation: ”We’ve got ourselves snookered. We’re not doomed but in a new fix that will test our capacity to make long-term decisions.”
• A great crowd were enthralled by the wit of Audrey Niffenegger, whose novel The time traveller’s wife had such massive success. “I pranced through the experience like Babmi,” she said. Her next book will be The chinchilla girl, about a 9-year-old who is completely covered in hair.
• Derek Johns, author and literary agent, was a bricklayer’s mate in New Zealand back in the day.
• A great range of topics and styles from the poets. Glyn Maxwell’s delivery was energetic and lively, while Kevin Connolly shared a poem about Great Aunt Olive, who used to put out.  Kate Camp was beguiling and wise (You can’t listen with your tongue). Geoff Cochrane shared his love of The Embassy Theatre: “No more readings in stripy circus tents.” Ian Wedde remembered his dad and the “inexhaustible fragrance” of linseed oil bottled on Adelaide Road.
• Wonderfully comfortable seats at the theatre – my particular thanks to the friends of Christine Massey for their generosity.
• The mule part of the story was walking around central Wellington snapping photos on a whistle-stop tour of The Revolt of the Mannequins. A lively changing story in the shop windows of downtown, with a sniper, am inspector and a cast of dozens.
• And yes, a peach mule with Kris who’s also blogging the festival.

Remember, there are images on flickr photostream and your comments are welcome at any time.