By JK, on June 16th, 2011 Annnnd we’re back with the bi-weekly bite-size book club that is Books in 140 Seconds. Last week we sauntered through Shawn Micallef’s Stroll, and this week we’re going on to a novel that provides a much less straightforward journey, Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew by acclaimed poet and short story writer Stuart Ross. Here’s what we thought about a book that might be as bite-size as these videos, but gives you a lot to chew on:
It’s a short book, but we really only scratched the surface of things to discuss. You can read it in one sitting, so if you didn’t read along, what are you waiting for?
Now, because Stuart’s such a great reader, a bonus video! Here’s him reading a scene from Snowball:
In two weeks we’ll be back with some lighter fare for your next sun-baked read, Jennifer Close’s Girls in White Dresses.
Lucky duck that I am, this week I attended Book Expo America with three of my fine ECW colleagues. To the uninitiated, BEA is an annual book industry trade show in NYC, where publishers go to hobnob with booksellers, librarians, agents, trade media, and each other. Here’s where I spent most of my three days:
But I also got some time to wander the floor now and again, which led to some great things. At the top of the list: An encounter with Tyra Banks herself when I eagerly got in line to get a signed sample chapter of the first book in her upcoming YA series, Modelland. Here’s the photo evidence:
Modelland presents a dystopian future with a modelling bent (as if the modelling industry wasn’t dystopian enough) and is sheer ridiculousness from start to finish, so naturally, I had a great time reading it. For those without this masterpiece in their hot little hands, a few examples of the aforementioned sheer ridiculousness:
The characters are named things like Tookie De la Creme (our Forgetta-Girl [TyTy's term] protagonist cursed with those slightly unusual looks that have proven such a challenge on ANTM again and again . . . [...]
By Sarah, on January 15th, 2010 Reading The Carnivore was an interesting experience for me, because I’ve never been so engrossed in a story centered on characters I couldn’t stand. Both of the protagonists teetered on the border of unbearable, and perhaps it was because I anxiously wanted to see what abyss they’d sink into next, but I just couldn’t get enough. Like the undertow of the flooding rivers the pages describe, each time I turned a page I was sucked further in.
This is the story of a failed marriage, a husband and wife narrating alternating chapters of reflection on their troubled past. It is a story of a shared memory lacking the capacity to heal, existing only as the point of regeneration for a lifelong downward spiral. This fictional trip through the past takes place on the backdrop of the very real Hurricane Hazel, one of the deadliest storms to ever hit southern Ontario. The metaphor of the storm tracks perfectly the course of Ray and Mary’s union; like the citizens of Toronto preparing for the floods, they didn’t know exactly what to expect, were hit with innumerable horrors but somehow managed to survive and, when it passed, felt nothing but relief.
Interestingly, Hurricane Hazel had [...]
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