You may already know that Louise Riley Library is centrally located and convenient to Lion's Park C-train station. Any road, did you also know that several staff are fans of the longest running soap opera Coronation Street, aka "Corrie Street" aka "The Street?" Give Over! Step right in to chat about recent drama on the cobbles as you check out great library material.

Perhaps you'd enjoy 50 years on the Street: My Life with Ken Barlow by William Roache, The Street's earliest resident or any of the other 10 or so books about the show. Betty Draper, who played Betty on the show recently passed away but we have Betty: the Autobiography to peruse. Ask Riley fans to place a hold for you and all.

Just don't be a "mucky cow" and mention details of the nightly episodes to Sandy before she has a chance to watch the Sunday omnibus!

by Sandy and Mel

By Laurie Schut

On December 14th, George Whitman, the founder of what is unquestionably the most famous bookstore in the world, passed away. The very next day the famous writer and political observer Christopher Hitchens also passed away. And the day after that? December 16th marked the birthday of Jane Austen. Three events in three days that deserve to be noted.

Be not inhospitable to strangers/Lest they be angels in disguise -Yeats. (Written on the walls of Shakespeare and Co. Paris)

George Whitman, the owner of the famous Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Company, died peacefully above his shop in his little apartment two days after turning 98. This was no ordinary bookshop and he was no ordinary bookstore owner. Long a fan of the literary arts, George would put up writers in return for a few hours work, usually in his library. And what writers! Ernest Hemingway, Anais Nin, Lawrence Durrell, Allen Ginsberg and Henry Miller all shared “a tea and a pancake" with George. Some 50,000 writers have passed through that bookstore since its inception in 1951.

I first heard about this extraordinary place because my boyfriend had packed it up, leaving snowy Calgary in a November so long ago it is almost non-existent, (1979), and gone… to Paris. To write. I was devastated. Not so much because he had left me, there was that, but because, well… I was the writer in the relationship.

He floundered, he wrote long letters ‘home’ to me, much to my amusement and chagrin, about Paris. He had gone to see the semi-mystical place called Shakespeare and Co. and had met a real writer. They were having drinks that night. More to follow. I put the letter away, thinking, yes, more to follow, almost tearing it in half. There were plenty more letters and more than one woman. Giving up, I returned to Victoria BC to continue writing. No Paris of the North, that’s for sure.

How could I ever forget Shakespeare and Co.? When a place assumes so much status as to beckon a young man from Calgary Alberta to cross the ocean to meet a real writer, then it has probably become iconic. George Whitman, wherever you are, I hope you are happy.

The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has — from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness. Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011.

It’s hard to write about famous dead authors, inevitably one wants to write in their style, or at least as well as they did. That's not possible with Christopher Hitchens. Over the past few days I’ve been reading what a wonderful writer he was, how he will be missed, his marathon drinking sessions, his problems with cancer, with smoking, and his rants. Everyone, it seems, has an anecdote about Hitchens. While he wrote for many periodicals he is closely assosiated withVanity Fair, a magazine that is never short on gossip and notoriety. He was famous for skewering that which might be considered sacred cows, like Mother Theresa whom he called her a fanatic and a fraud. He judged the Catholic Church hypocritical for their beatification of herr a scant year after her death; “It's the sheer tawdriness that strikes the eye first of all. It used to be that a person could not even be nominated for ‘beatification,’ the first step to ‘sainthood,’ until five years after his or her death.” (Slate, Monday Oct. 20, 2003). He cautioned that there have been enough fraudulent claims made in her name to make the whole thing suspicious, but she had some heavy hitters behind her, with money. And, as they say, money talks. I don’t know whether he was correct or not, but the sheer nerve of the man to go after someone as high profile as her, with so many worthy things in her name, astounds me. He had a nose for corruption, and followed it, relentlessly.

Jane Austen’s Birthday

Jane Austen was born Dec. 16, 1775 to a family of gentry, making her, I assume, a gentlewoman. She and her sister Cassandra were close friends in a family of six brothers. Jane often reminds me of her character Elizabeth Bennet, the saucy, rather caustic and rather sarcastic one. Cassandra, I imagine, would be Jane Bennet. I assume the rest are purely fictional. Her views on marriage and how it is to be secured have led her to be one of the best loved authors . She has spawned a rather large number of offshoots, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, by Ben H. Winters, and a slew of movies from BBC. Many want to be her, few can. Jane Austen’s Book Club, for instance, falls short. The number of times I’ve hopefully opened a book with stunning reviews, “the next Jane Austen” only to turn from it in disgust.

Jane is inimitable. "...Jane Austen, of course, wise in her neatness, trim in her sedateness; she never fails, but there are few or none like her."

Edith Wharton, 1925

We put out a table with Jane’s books, her competitors’ books, DVDs and scholarly books. The table wasn’t big enough. Strange to say, only a few were written by her, much more has been written about her, and in copy of her. Isn’t that nice?

Shakespeare: Jane, do have a pastry, they are divine.

Jane: If they are divine, they are of no consequence to me. I prefer the earthly, and the mundane. But to make of that divine, that would be something.

Shakespeare: Oh, dammit Jane, have a pastry and be done. They’ll fatten you up, make you presentable at court and then I’ll write about you. How would that be?

Jane: And of what would you write? A poor writer, an even worse scholar and a failure as a woman? I think not. Thank you.

Shakespeare: What, you would scorn to be immortalized by me?

Jane: I have my embroidery, thank you.

Some people are hard to please. I think that Jane was one of them.

In 2012, Joni's going to share one of her comics the first Friday of each month. Stay tuned...and remember to use proper punctuation!

Post by Laurie Schut

“Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: ‘It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.’

‘But that was not the same snow,’ I say. ‘Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards.’”

All I can say is, if you haven’t read this classic, please do. It’s marvelous, and when the writing is this good, you can read or listen to it for hours. For maximum enjoyment I suggest:

1. A fire to curl up beside.
2. A glass of eggnog.
3. Something wonderful on the CD player, preferably Mozart.
4. Time.
5. A small child to read this to.

It is the most enchanting thing you will do this Christmas. Besides opening your new gifts.

Library people love word jokes and have been known to value punctuation! Our two interests are joined in this new comic series by Joni Righthand. She is one of Riley's customers and has generously offered to share her comics with us. Joni has been illustrating comics for four years. She learned a lot about illustrating through library books.

The name of Joni's comic is Punctuation Association. It stars two characters named Question and Excla. She recently self published them in a book. Stay tuned for more adventures!

By Laurie Schut

I went to a bookstore with my friend for our yearly Christmas binge of shopping and found myself staring at a bewildering array of Christmas gifts. There were Heather’s Picks, there were the 30% off books, and there was another promotion where if you spent $50.00 or more they would throw in a blanket. Not to mention the little cute stuffed animals, the candy and the sumptuous displays of Christmas paraphernalia. What’s a girl to do? I dove in and here’s what we came up with:

Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus series, starting with The Amulet of Samarkand, for my friend’s 11 year old boy. If he likes it, there are two more in the series, plus a special prequel.

Two books I chose for my friend were the new Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers, and Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, both reasonably priced. I also got, ahem, a hot water bottle wrapped in a little sweater. OK, I’m a sucker for cute gifts.

She also picked up the new P.D. James book, a murder mystery about Elizabeth Barrett, (Pride and Prejudice) called Death Comes to Pemberley, and a non-fiction book about the history of the Bow River. I swear, there’s nothing you cannot buy for a member of your family if you go to a bookstore. So, do. Go. Dive in. I swear, the water’s just fine.

What is your name? Connie Geerts

Why do you paint birds? They evoke memories of time spent in nature.

What is your favourite kind of bird? My favourites are redwinged black birds and chickadees

Who are your favourite artists? Right now... Brian Rutenburg (it changes!)

What book are you reading? Just finished Jim Butcher's "Dresden files" series. Fun stuff!

What colour makes you happiest? Orange

What’s your favourite section of the library? The kids section

What is your website? www.conniegeerts.com

Reviewed by Laurie Schut

I stumbled upon the Mercedes Lackey books this summer when a colleague suggested a series to me. I was smitten at first read. She’s written well over fifty books, by her own reckoning, so I shouldn’t have to do without for a long, long time. They are surprisingly well written and researched for so prolific an author (think Joyce Carol Oates) and they are, at first blush, not very much alike. True, they borrow from each other, in that themes reoccur, griphons, fights against the Dark Ones, Elves, magic, mages, (a take on Superheroes,) and are often written as trilogies. Feminist style. For instance, the one I just read, the first in the Valdemar series, is called Arrows of the Queen, and has a young girl who is ‘chosen’ by her Companion ( a kind of Superhero horse), to be a Herald. Heralds serve the Queen. (It’s beginning to seem like a matriarchy.) People swear by the Goddess, and Talia, the heroine, comes from a ‘backward place’ where women are married off by the age of thirteen to a husband, who already has several wives. (Patriarchal). She escapes such punishing surrounds to find herself in heaven, or Haven. It takes a long time for her to let her guard down, and to prove to herself (not others, they already knew) that she is indeed the Queen’s Own Herald.

I liked this for a number of reasons. First, it’s a feminist take on fantasy which tends to be rather masculine. Second, well, her characters are so compelling. And then, there’s the plot, which is poor girl makes good. She’s plagued by her own self doubts and some pretty malicious Blues who have infiltrated the Collegium, her place of study. Does this sound like a typical problem for most women? Bullying and low self-esteem. And then there’s those free and easy ways of the other Heralds, shocking to Talia who was born and bred to be a mother and compliant. In Haven, sex is not frowned upon, but marriage at the age of 13 to a much older man (where Talia came from) is. It’s refreshing to read a story and not have to stumble over the biases of a patriarchy. I guess that’s why Lackey’s books are intriguing, they take us to a time and place where women are not given short shrift.

book coverThe Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman is a collection of short stories about a set of characters working at an English language newspaper in Rome. Some of my book club members disliked the jumping around among characters, and would have preferred a more linear plot with developing characters. Others enjoyed it, citing the excellent character studies and easily readable sections. The perfect one chapter before bedtime book! It is like a Robert Altman movie, with the connections between all the various characters slowly revealed. One thing it is not particularly about, though, is Rome! The Italian setting didn't figure very heavily in the story at all. The book lead to interesting discussions about the impending digital age and what it will mean for newspapers and books. A good read, although some felt there could have been at least one functional happy romantic relationship among the characters!

You can see why I'm the Lazy Reader. My reviews are much shorter than the well written essays of the Book Snob!

When I was a bookseller a friend of mine insisted I read a novel called So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell. It was, and still is, one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. I am amazed that his name is not more widely known among the general reading public. I suppose he is one of those "writer's writers" - a craftsman whose works are appreciated most by other people who know how difficult it is to make writing that looks this easy. Many of the novels he wrote dealt with childhood and adolescence. I remember listening to a interview with Michael Ondaatje in which he was asked what he felt was a great example of a novel of youth. He replied that while many people thought The Catcher in the Rye is the great novel of this type, he personally felt So Long, See You Tomorrow was a far superior. I couldn't agree more.

So Long, See You Tomorrow is a story told by a man looking back on his childhood. A lonely and introverted boy coming to terms with the death of his mother. He takes the first tentative steps toward friendship with another boy named Cletus Smith. But the friendship ends abruptly by an act of violence involving Cletus's father- and coming to terms with this violent act becomes the obsession of the adult narrator. When newspaper accounts and court records prove unsatisfactory and misleading, the narrator imagines the events that led up to the tragic act. Jealousy, longing, impotent rage; all the unseemly human emotions that lived just beneath the skin of the quiet Midwestern farming community are brought forth and the loss is made understandable, if not acceptable. The story is made more real for the author's constant reminders that it is not real. Truth is not always found in the reportage of events - sometimes it is somewhere else. And sometimes it is the work of the artist rather than the reporter to take us there.

I don't know about you, but I find that my favorite book by an author is often the first one I read by him or her. I think So Long, See You Tomorrow will always be my favourite William Maxwell work, but it is a book he wrote over forty years earlier, They Came Like Swallows, that many contend is his greatest work. It is hard to argue. The story revolves around an eight-year-old boy living in a small mid-western farming community when the 1918 influenza epidemic hits, taking the lives of many including the child's mother. This book has soo much raw emotion in it, and yet the writing is so firmly controlled that the resulting tension is unbelievable. I do not believe anyone can read this novella an not be deeply moved. No doubt the book derives much of its power from the fact that it is largely autobiographical. Maxwell was only ten when his mother died of influenza.

Besides being the author of six novels spread over nearly fifty years of his career, he was the long serving fiction editor at The New Yorker magazine, and as such was the editor for such writers as Vladimir Nabokov, Mavis Gallant and J. D. Salinger. He was an accomplished short story writer himself, and the Calgary Public Library carries several of his collections of short fiction. My personal favourite is The Old Man at the Railroad Crossing and Other Tales. Written between 1957 and 1966, these short stories are remarkably different from what one might expect from William Maxwell. Maxwell's novels are highly realistic, internal investigations wherein the smallest shades of emotion are examined with precision and care. The stories in this book are, by contrast, almost flights of fancy - folktales and fables that have no firm setting in time or place, and the "truth" these stories try to get at is illuminated more by circumstances than by feeling. There are morals to these stories, but often they are not the morals you would expect. Sometimes you are left with the sensation of being told a truth that you can not define.

The power these stories have may well come from some sort of primal source Maxwell tapped into while writing them. In his own words, "I didn't so much write them as do my best to keep out of the way of their writing themselves". The result is a collection of stories that the reader will be an active participant in the creation of meaning. I can not imagine anybody not finding a story in this collection that they would feel had been written specifically for them, and I would particularly recommend it to those who are cynical about the practical value of fiction.

William Keepers Maxwell passed away in July 2000, just a few weeks shy of his Ninety-Second birthday. In the few short years since his passing it seems that more and more people in the general public have discovered what writers like Ondaatje have always known - that he was one of the best writers of his generation.