Playing Detective! (Standing in Another Man's Grave)

Standing in Another Man's Grave
Ian Rankin

Lovers of police procedurals and thrillers are very thorough and also easily addicted. The most common question when looking for a new author is “Which is the first in the series?”  They don’t want to miss any details and enjoy building their understanding of the detective, often an anti-hero who has no boundaries, is anti-establishment and misanthropic, and relishes jazz and processed meat sandwiches. 

But here’s the problem. There are often ten or twenty titles in the ongoing drama of any detective and some of them might be out of print. Publishers seem to have a problem putting the number in the series on the spine or cover of the book. Bookstores may not be able to stock all titles of all writers. Sometimes publishers even change the name of some of the books so people think that they are buying a new title, but really they’re not. Also, some authors have more than one living and breathing detective.

Last month I decided to take the plunge with Ian Rankin, one of our most popular writers. I’ve been meaning to read him for a long time so I went to the shelf and chose Standing in Another Man's Grave, which turned out to be the most recent book. Looked good to me, so I didn’t bother looking for the first. Rankin’s character Rebus is a prickly old guy who basically pisses off almost everyone he comes into contact with. But he’s obsessed with his job and, to the consternation of higher-ups, always gets his man.

It becomes pretty obvious as the story progresses that Rebus has a nemesis and his name is Cafferty. Cafferty is a gangster who has been causing havoc in Edinburgh for years. So now I’m pretty committed to going backwards and putting the pieces together in this very fraught relationship. It probably won’t be in backwards numerical order though. This just makes my detective work slightly more challenging!

- Barb

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The Bookshelf Open Writing Room (Mondays 9 a.m. - 12 p.m.)

It’s been a year since I’ve written anything, save a sloppy email, a saucy Facebook update. Nothing worth nothing. I’d had a writing practice once. I’ve romanticized it now, I know. I’m aching for it. Truly aching to write about something I care about. Maybe something you care about. But I never find the time to compose a thing. No matter the desire, it’s too easy for me to let myself down

A few months back, I dropped hours at my job to make space for writing. It was time I needed. A cut in pay to drive up the stakes. Not high enough. It was summer. There were fires to build, children to hose, lawn to lay on.

It’s come to the point where thinking about writing feels like the chest pangs, the stomach flutters you get in the presence of a crush. Something so desirable and so unattainable. Crushed hope.

The stakes need to be higher. That’s where you come in. I need your peer pressure.
Starting this writing room at the Bookshelf is strictly selfish. If I host three hours on a Monday morning where I make you sit and write and shush you if you start chatting, I better be writing, too.

Maybe you need the Writing Room?

Here’s how it works:

• It’s free and open to anyone who wants to write. No commitment except to yourself.
• Come up the front stairs to the Greenroom.
• You bring your tools (pencils sharpened, laptops charged, as there are only a few outlets--an extension cord would help us out).
• Show up any time you like between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. Mondays, except holidays.
• Please be quiet. Write first, chat later.
• We have wifi.
• I’ll make coffee and tea (please make a small donation when you can).
• At 11:30, anyone who wishes to share his or her work with others can move next door to the eBar

That’s it!

Thanks. You are already helping—I wrote my first blog.

- Dawn

Mary Swan Launches My Ghosts at The Bookshelf

It's a bonkers season for launches and readings here at the Bookshelf, and we really couldn't have gotten off on a better foot than we did with Mary Swan. Last night, the eBar was stuffed to the gills with family, friends, and fans who came out to celebrate Mary's new novel, My Ghosts. Seeing the space that full and alive is just about the best reminder of what we've been striving to do at The Bookshelf for the past forty years: celebrate the hell out of authors and artists (local or otherwise) and connect them with the community.

The fall is likewise a busy release season. There's an embarrassment of great new titles coming into the store on a daily basis. For me, My Ghosts really stands out. Mary's first book, the Scotiabank Giller-nominated The Boys in the Trees, used a community's worth of lives to digest a single, confounding crime. In My Ghosts Mary continues to challenge linear narrative, telling the story of family expansion over a decade while also exploring the meaning and implications of time, of heritage, of stories, and of how all three can shape a person. Mary's storytelling is subtle, complex, and always compelling. The book is like nothing else, but always feels familiar—familial, even.

The success of an individual in a community can't help but rub off on that community, and certainly everyone left last night's reading a little bit buffed by Mary's achievement.

- Andrew

 

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The October Bookshelf Non-Fiction Book Club Winner

The Bookshelf Non-Fiction Book Club has been running for over a year, and we've read some great books. We read about eight books a year and discuss them in the Greenroom over food and drinks. It's a terrific opportunity to engage with people who have been absorbing the same information from a different perspective.

Our book for the October book club was chosen via an online poll. The contenders included Lawrence Weschler's Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Douglas Rushkoff's Present Shock, Chuck Klosterman's I Wear the Black Hat, Nelson Mandela's Conversations With Myself,  and Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian. The poll was open for a week, and it was a very tight race between Nelson Mandela, Douglas Rushkoff, and Guelph local Thomas King.

The eventual winner, by a hair's breadth, was The Inconvenient Indian, by Thomas King. King offers a very personal meditation on the history of Native people in North America and on his own experience of being an Aboriginal person in both the United States and Canada. The book club will be meeting on Thursday, October 10, at 7:00 pm in the Greenroom. If you're looking for an intriguing alternative to fiction book clubs, come out and talk politics, philosophy, and memoirs with us. Reality is far more interesting than reality TV!

- Ben

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The Bookshelf 40th Anniversary Fall Reading Series

To celebrate our fortieth year, a huge roster of star authors is coming to the Bookshelf and environs this fall, culminating in a reading by none other than Margaret Atwood! Check out this lineup:

Oct. 8, 8:00 p.m. The eBar	Stephen Henighan, A Green Reef: The Impact of Climate Change
Oct. 9, 7:00 p.m. Lakeside Hope House	Maude Barlow, Blue Future, hosted by the Council of Canadians and The Bookshelf
Oct. 18, 7:00 p.m. Lakeside Hope House	Andrew Nikiforuk (The Energy of Slaves) and Stephane Dion, hosted by the Council of Canadians and The Bookshelf
Oct. 23, 7:00 p.m. The eBar	Deborah Cowley, The Library Tree: How a Canadian Woman Brought the Joy of Reading to a Generation of African Children.
Oct. 29, 7:00 p.m. Lakeside Hope House Nov. 2, 7:30 p.m. The eBar  Nov. 8, 7:00 p.m. The eBar	Lawrence Hill, 2013 Massey Lecturer, Blood: The Stuff of Life. Hosted by the University of Guelph's College of Arts Cafe Philosophique and The Bookshelf Stacey May Fowles, Infidelity; Sean Johnston, Listen All You Bullets Lyle Estill reads from his book Small Stories, Big Changes
Nov. 10, 2:00 p.m. St. George's Church	Sally Armstrong, The Ascent of Women, hosted by the Zonta Club of Guelph and The Bookshelf
Nov. 12, 7:00 p.m. The eBar	Catherine Bush, Accusation; Karen Connelly, Come Cold River; Michael Winter, Minister Without Portfolio
Nov. 21, 7:00 p.m. The Bookshelf Cinema	Mary Lawson (Road Ends) and Wayne Johnston (The Son of a Certain Woman)
Nov. 27, 8:00 p.m. War Memorial Hall, University of Guelph	Margaret Atwood (MaddAddam), hosted by the University of Guelph's College of Arts Cafe Philosophique and The Bookshelf (Tickets $10/$8 students)

We hope you can join us! Watch our website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed for details on these and other events. 

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Vote for the October Non-fiction Book Club Title

Last month the Non-fiction Book Club talked about Michael Pollan's Cooked. It was nice to chat with people about barbequing, bread making, braising, and fermentation. By the end of the night I was very hungry, and happy that Michael Pollan will be appearing in Guelph for the Eden Mills Writer's Festival on September 14.

This morning I had a browse around the store and a few great titles jumped off the shelves and begged to be put into an online poll for our next book club. It's an eclectic list. There is the current, the historical, the weird, and the obscure. Have a look at the poll and cast your vote. For more information on a book, just click its title. You can only vote once.

The poll closes on Friday, August 23, 11:00 p.m., and the book club will be in The Bookshelf Greenroom on October 10, 7:00 p.m. Come talk about ideas over great food and drink in a relaxed atmosphere.

Hope to see you there!

- Ben

Which book would you like to discuss in the October non-fiction book club?

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, by Lawrence Weschler

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, by Douglas Rushkoff

I Wear the Black Hat, by Chuck Klosterman

Conversations with Myself, by Nelson Mandela

The Inconvenient Indian, by Thomas King

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The Savage Detectives

The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolaño
 
When The Savage Detectives won the prestigious Rómulo Gallegos Prize (the Spanish equivalent of the Booker) in 1998, Roberto Bolaño became acclaimed as a writer throughout Latin America. The English-speaking world caught on to his significance only after his death from liver disease in 2003, but since then Bolaño has become a posthumous literary superstar in North America as well.

To get a sense of the contrasting worlds presented in The Savage Detectives, imagine a copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry splayed face down on the dirty ground in a garbage-strewn alleyway. On the one hand, Bolaño’s novel presents an intense, romantic, literary idealism. It traces the journeys of Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano, the young bohemian founders of an avant-garde poetic movement (visceral realism), as they search for the lost poems of one of their artistic precursors. For Lima, Belano, and their poetic co-conspirators, poetry is their prime mover—or it might be that the chaotic passions that drive them can only find sufficient ground for expression in poetry, or the idea of poetry.

But, on the other hand, if Lima and Belano are poetic angels, they sport the filthiest of halos. Although they are the protagonists of Belano’s novel, we never learn about them directly. Instead, we see them filtered through a screen of interviews, diaries, and stories from dozens of other characters, some more reliable than others. And the collective picture painted isn’t a pretty one—Lima and Belano lurch their way through squalid lives, poor, unmoored, and drug-addled, drifting from Latin America to Europe to Africa, settling nowhere and leaving behind a trail of people sometimes wounded by them and sometimes grudgingly touched by their grubby artistic aura.

Roberto Bolaño

The Savage Detectives echoes with a cacophony of voices--some profound, some hilarious, some disturbing--and it’s as fascinating to suss out the various speakers as it is to sift through their impressions of Lima and Belano. In fact, although Bolaño’s novel is all about poetry, we never actually read any of the visceral realists’ poems, save one; our assessment of their status as poets has to be made second hand, from the various narrators’ comments (Hello Seymour Glass!). And there are some who deny that Lima and Belano are poets at all. But what can't be denied, and what makes Bolaño’s novel such a powerful and compelling read, is Lima and Belano's vitality--even buried in the world's muck and smothered by the young men's own stumbling, errant desires, the spark of poetry in them refuses to go out.

Ultimately, The Savage Detectives presents the reader with an extreme form of binocular vision: one eye is trained on the beauty of art while the other keeps a blurry focus on the smog-stained, factious life of the streets. The challenge for the novel’s characters and readers is to bring those disparate images into a unified vision. Offering a few words of poetry peeking out from the scuffed, crumpled pages of a book in an alley, Bolaño challenges us to journey in and turn the book over to read the rest.

- Bruce

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