Not much writing going on, unfortunately, as the demands of spring start to make themselves felt. Lawns to rake, mow and perhaps even reseed, a garden to build, a shed door to repair, a driveway to fix, all call out to me every time I find myself with a spare moment.

I find myself in the interesting position of having three major writing projects on the go and it's possible that being pulled in three different directions may also be having an impact on my activity levels. I don't know for sure but I think the yard work is going to have to take precedence, at least for the next while.

We're facing yet another perigee full moon tonight, which should be nice. Here in Fredericton, the forecast is for clear skies so we should have a great view. The challenge is that the moon is closest to earth and fullest at about 12:30 a.m. tomorrow, meaning I'll have to drag myself out of bed to see/photograph it. If I don't sleep through it, I will share whatever photos I get with you soon.

I've been reading Jane Austen of late, first Pride and Prejudice and now Sense and Sensibility. I'm surprised by how much I am enjoying these books which are now two hundred years old. I find them witty and fun and, despite the fact that not much actually happens from the standpoint of action, rather engaging.

Patti and I also had the chance to visit an exhibition of photography here in Freddieville, held in the Centre Communitaire de St. Anne and featuring the work of my colleague Michelle Anne Dugay. Twenty-two photographs make up the Carnet De Voyages show and their combined impact is really quite stunning. Michelle Anne has a wonderfully creative photographic eye and an excellent sense of the structure of an image. Patti and I thoroughly enjoyed the show (which unfortunately closed last night) and came away thinking of new ways to use my own photographs (properly printed and framed, of course) in the decoration of our home.

I still have not heard back from the publisher, making it approximately six months since I provided my full Phillip Gold manuscript to them, so I'm forcing myself to accept that I need to get back on the trail of marketing that novel elsewhere. I still haven't received a "no" from them but six months of silence certainly begins to taste like a "no", doesn't it?

Today's Photo: A street scene, with scaffold, from Halifax's Historic Properties District.

Tags: Jane Austen, Michelle Anne Duguay, Carnet de voyages, Fredericton, Phillip Gold, Mystery, Writing

Finally, a moment to give you my thoughts on the film adaptation of The Hunger Games.

It may surprise some of you to read that I actually really enjoyed the movie. I don't think it was perfect, of course, but I thought they did an excellent job with what I can only guess was a very difficult book to adapt to the big screen.

It's an unfortunate fact of life, however, that it is often easier to describe what you don't like about someone or something than it is to say what you do like. So, if the following comments seem too heavily weighted toward the negative, I apologise. Keep in mind throughout that I came away from the film feeling pretty good about it.

I was particularly impressed with the way in which the filmmakers dealt with the build up toward the actual Hunger Games themselves. I had expected them to rush through the early scenes of the novel, to blow through the set-up story to get to the arena and kick the action into high gear. Thankfully, however, they did no such thing. They took their time to establish clearly the background from which Katniss Everdeen emerges, the story of why she is thrust into a fight to the death with 23 other young people and the cost to her and her family of her volunteering to replace her baby sister in that battle.

I was actually very impressed with how well the film portrayed the intense poverty and desperation of the people of District 12, even if I felt that the two Tributes (Katniss and Peeta) looked altogether too healthy and well-fed from the very start of the film.

I found those early scenes extremely emotional and I think it is a tribute (pardon the pun) to Jennifer Lawrence's performance that I found her sacrifice so overwhelmingly touching.

Despite some negative reviews I've read on the performance of Lenny Kravitz as Cinna, I thought he was quite excellent as well. In fact, I have a hard time coming up with even a single weak acting performance in the entire film. If Lawrence and the young man who played Peeta weren't so altogether too fleshy for the roles they inhabit, it would be a perfectly cast film. As one friend pointed out during our post-film discussion, it's amazing that, out of all the malnourished, overly thin actresses on offer in Hollywood, this film would cast one of the few truly healthy-looking young starlets in the role of lean, mean and starving Katniss Everdeen.

The action in the arena I thought was well-presented as well. It was far from bloody enough, to be sure, and the cleaning up of the novel required to get the film the rating it needed to allow its target audience (young teens) to attend means that the film itself completely undermines one of the key messages in Collins' book: that killing is a bloody business and children and teens suffer and die in our violent society as much as do adults. But, that being said, I found the action to be fairly well wrought.

I was also grateful that the filmmakers, in attempting to squeeze a novel-length story into a short-story-length film, decided to shorten Collins' overlong, over-emotional final scene that sees Katniss' worst enemy torn slowly, ever so slowly, to pieces by horrific wolf-like animals. The scene was unnecessarily prolonged in the book and the movie people managed to trim it down to a more appropriate length while losing little of the effect.

If I was disappointed in any way, it was that the filmmakers managed to miss completely on several of the book's most pivotal, visual scenes. I find this, by the way, completely amazing to think about: with the Harry Potter films, I was critical of the filmmakers for choosing to add invented scenes into several movies and for embellishing many of the author's existing scenes in order to make the films more visually exciting.

My criticism here goes in the opposite direction: Collins' written descriptions of several key scenes far outshine the visual presentation of those scenes in the film. Take, for example, Katniss and Peeta's entrance before the crowds in the Capitol, dressed in Cinna's shockingly simple body suits, but then set on fire to the amazement and delight of the people. In the book, this scene is magical. In the film, it's a flash in the pan.

Another key scene involves Peeta's announcement during his media interview of his love for Katniss. In the book, this is remarkably moving scene that Collins brings to life for her reader. We see in our minds the cameras moving hungrily between Peeta, who has dropped this bombshell, the roaring crowd which eats it up and finally Katniss, still on stage, responding with shock and embarrassment that only serves to feed the moment further. The filmmakers manage to leave Katniss out of it entirely, diluting the scene both visually and emotionally.

I did like the way the movie people used the tv commentators to provide much-needed exposition on developments in the arena, a nifty strategy to help replace the information the readers of the book receive directly from Katniss herself. And I didn't mind the inclusion of behind-the-scenes glimpses of the mechanical and political machinations of the games themselves, which I see as another device used by the filmmakers to cover ground that is covered in the book through Katniss' first person narrative.

The film adaptation of The Hunger Games is not perfect, not by a long shot, but I was surprised at how much it moved and affected me. I may just see it again and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the original novel.

Today's Photo: HMCS Ville de Quebec sails majestically past George's Island in Halifax Harbour on its way out so sea.

Tags: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, Katniss, Everdeen, Peeta, Gale, Jennifer Lawrence

So that was Halifax.

I'm back from nine days in Nova Scotia's fabulous city and am pleased to report that I had a great time. I'm not so pleased to report that I didn't do half as much writing as I had hoped to do but I guess you can't have everything.

Halifax is a strange city and, on this visit, it was made even stranger by the Centennial of the Titanic Tragedy. For some reason, Halifax saw this sad occasion as a reason to party rather than mourn and it kind of left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. Even worse was the fact that the Titanic Centennial drew hundreds of people to the city from all over North America and, other than the questionable celebration events, nothing was done to make these off-season tourists feel welcome.

Most of the town's restaurants maintained winter hours, as did the stores and boutiques. It wasn't unusual to find bemused Americans wandering down Barrington at 7 p.m. asking: "Is there anything open?"

Thankfully, I wasn't there as a tourist so much as a visitor (if there's any real difference). My goal was to visit the book stores, record shops and video outlets as well as coffee shops of all shapes and sizes. And I found some nice book stores and coffee shops at least. Not to mention Taz Records, which is one of the best used record and CD shops I've ever seen.

Patti suggested that I try my hand at writing a more literary book than my usual courtroom drama or detective story so I thought I'd start a novel that examines how wealth and class play themselves out in the academic setting. To get myself prepared, I bought The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro's wonderful novel, and Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice from Trident Booksellers, one of the city's better used book stores.

To my surprise, I roared through Ishiguro's story of class and meaning as seen through the eyes of an aging English butler, starting and finishing it within the space of just 24 hours. The Austen novel is still a work in progress for me but I don't mind admitting it's provided me with any number of laugh-out-loud moments thus far.

My own novel, on the other hand, stands today at four pages in length. Four good pages, I think, but still... just four pages.

Work on The Final Curtain, my new Phillip Gold courtroom drama/thriller, went a lot better. I spent a wonderful morning sipping coffee in a nearly empty Halifax Farmers Market (with few vendors and even fewer customers) first reviewing the first 20,000 words of the book and then beginning to move the story forward. It was satisfying work and helped to remind me how comfortable I am with the characters and settings I've created over the three completed manuscripts involving the adventures of Mr. Gold.

I also managed to see The Hunger Games, the movie, and then to spend five joyous hours discussing it and all things literary with our friend Steph, who never ceases to challenge me and dent my certainty about how I feel about different films and novels.

I plan to write some thoughts on the film version of Suzanne Collins' dystopic vision soon, so keep an eye out for it. Meanwhile, I'm going to continue the juggling act of reading Austen and writing two novels at once.

Today's Photo: A creative wall mural: a statue of a woman gazes down at the street from an upper window.

Tags: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, Taz Records, Trident books, Halifax, Barrington Street, Jane Austen, Remains of The Day

As I approach the start of a much-anticipated writing vacation in the beautiful city of Halifax, where I hope to make good progress on The Final Curtain even as I catch up on some much needed sleep, I am finally finishing up my birthday reading.

The last two books I am reading are the 1979-1980 and 1981-1982 volumes of The Complete Peanuts, the definitive collection of Charles Schulz's classic comic strip. Yes, I've left the easiest and most entertaining reading task until last. I just wish I could force myself to slow down and enjoy the art work as much as I do the conversation in these little gems.

Of course, the fact that I've moved on to Peanuts proves that I have completed, at last, my reading of The Hunger Games Trilogy, by Suzanne Collins. With the recent release of the blockbuster film version of the first novel, Collins’ dystopian trilogy has been receiving a great deal of press of late. Not that the first book in the series needed any more promotion: The Hunger Games, the novel, was already doing very well, thank you very much, considered in many circles as the next great Young Adult success story, following the Harry Potter and Twilight series of the past decade.

Over the past year or so, I’ve had a lot of people (people whose taste and intelligence I greatly respect) recommending the Collins books to me in strong terms. One friend, who happens to be a literature professor, actually appears to prefer The Hunger Games collection to the Harry Potter series, a position that I consider completely unfathomable.

All of that being said, I recently borrowed Collins’ first novel from a colleague at work, to give myself to test the waters so to speak without having to invest any cash.

I’ve already written in this space about my response to The Hunger Games as a novel: the first two thirds of the book are absolutely riveting, some of the best, most exciting writing I’ve read in a long time. But, in my opinion (an opinion that I understand is not popular in all neighbourhoods), the last third of that book fails to live up to the quality of the first part, losing its immediacy and intensity as Collins drifts further and further away from the strengths of her writing and her chosen form.

I’ve now read the final two books in the sequence (Catching Fire and Mockingjay) and I’m sorry to report that, in my opinion at least, things only continue to deteriorate through these two tomes.

Now, I’m well aware of the many positive aspects of these novels, especially when it comes to theme and message:
• The trilogy is exceptional for featuring a strong, complex young female lead character;
• The trilogy is exceptional for its realistic presentation of the conflicted emotional life of a teenage girl;
• The trilogy offers important criticisms of the state of our world today, including societies that package the most impoverished and desperate among them for the entertainment and sport of the wealthy (see Reality Television);
• The trilogy highlights the growing disparity between rich and poor in our society, where the rich focus on their own bizarre gratification while the poor slowly starve to death;
• The trilogy brings to our attention the injustice of societies that enlist the least empowered of their citizens to fight and die to protect the comfortable lives of the select few;
• And much more.

That’s all great. But my problem is, the ideas might be worthy but the writing is not.

I get the feeling that Collins sold her publisher on the idea of publishing this trio of novels with only the first part of the first novel lovingly completed. When the publisher gave her a contract, it also gave her a series of deadlines to finish each novel in the collection, deadlines which were more about making money than about producing quality fiction.

That’s the only way I can possibly explain how incredibly good the first part of the novel is – it proves that Collins has a talent that few possess and many would envy – and how disappointing the remainder of the trilogy truly is: Collins was rushed in finishing book one and in producing books two and three and, thus, unable to give them the care and attention that she devoted to the first 170 pages of the first novel.

I may be wrong but that’s what it feels like to me.

The first novel is a simple story. Katniss Everdeen, at 16 forced to care and provide for her mother and baby sister as they struggle to survive in the most impoverished of her nation’s 12 districts, finds herself polished up, sold to an adoring public and then dropped into an Arena to fight and, if possible, kill 23 other young people from the rest of the country. We live every moment with Katniss and, for the most part, it’s a tense, stirring, surprisingly “real” experience.

The book is successful because it involves a challengingly complex main character, a brutal set of challenges and just enough information on the society from which those challenges spring to keep the reader happy.

The second book, Catching Fire, is too often a mere retelling of the first novel. The plots are similar, the thrills all too familiar and the themes a rehash of the original. The main character remains stagnant and the other characters too often devolve into mere cartoons. I have to keep reminding myself that the target audience is young adults so perhaps they won’t be able to predict how the novel will end as easily as I did. But I can’t help but believe that Collins underestimates the youth of today. The ending is badly telegraphed early in the novel, which makes the reader’s slow progress to the end practically unendurable.

The third book, Mockingjay, is worse. With Katniss now dressed in a Mockingjay costume, armed with a bow and arrow to take on the Capitol’s hoverplanes, fire bombs and machine guns, the novel deteriorates into the worst kind of super hero comicbook. This is the story of the revolution of the impoverished Districts against the all-powerful Capitol and, unfortunately, it requires Collins to provide a little too much detail about the political and social structure of this futuristic nation, detail that simply fails to cohere. Once again, the ending is telegraphed and any even moderately attentive reader will know what will happen long before the end finally comes.

And I can't help feeling greatly disappointed with the very end, the epilogue, if you will, wherein we see this complex, rebellious, fiercely independent young woman settled down into the all-too conventional life of wife and mother.

I still plan to see the film version of The Hunger Games but I doubt I'll ever read any of the three books again, nor will I recommend any but the first to friends who express an interest.

Today's Photo: The author surveys Halifax harbour from the bridge on a visit made several years ago.

Tags: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay, Catching Fire, Halifax, Writing, Novel, Courtroom drama

A recent birthday brings more great books for my reading list and it's once again a varied and interesting collection.

Viva la Repartee is a sort of study of "clever comebacks and witty retorts from history's great wits and wordsmiths", to quote the front cover. Mardy Grothe is the guy behind this 280-page collection, having researched each and every item in the book. I found it an interesting and fun read which provided fodder for a whole weekend's worth of conversations with Patti and our friend, Normand, who was visiting from Quebec.

I followed that one by reading the three Harry-Potter companion books I received from Patti: The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, all written by J.K. Rowling to support various charities. They're fun reads but warning: only true Harry Potter fans should read these books. They really do require a fairly intimate knowledge of the original seven Harry Potter novels.

Next up was Julian Barnes' novella, The Sense of an Ending, which won the Man Booker Prize and a number of other awards. This is a beautifully written, subtle story of one man's life and the relationships that gave that life shape and meaning. It is a thoroughly enjoyable read and I would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in character, memory and the meaning in a life. I have to admit, however, that I didn't quite understand the book's ending. Maybe it was too subtle for me. Oh well. A great book nonetheless.

My next reading project is the second and third parts of The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins. I have already read the first book in the collection which, as I have written in this blog, I found to be both exceptional and disappointing. Using a Chapters gift card generously sent by a friend from Ontario, I ordered the boxed set of the books and look forward to seeing if my friends and family are right in telling me that rest of the books are well worth reading.

Also on deck: The Complete Peanuts, 1979-1980 and 1981-1982. I now own the first sixteen volumes in this fantastic collection and I'm looking forward to reading my two newest books.

All of that being said, however, don't you find it odd (or perhaps fitting) that more than half of the books I received for my recent birthday are either for kids, young adults or fans of comic strips?

Today's Photo: Flower blossoms beautifully illuminated by the late afternoon sun.

Tags: J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, Beedle the Bard, Mardy Groethe, Julian Barnes, Peanuts, Charlie Brown, Newt Scamander

By page five, I’m interested.

By fifteen, I’m enthralled.

By page fifty, I’m resenting anything that comes between me and my reading, be it the chores at home, my work at the office, even the snow that falls on the pages as I walk home from the bus.

Yes, I have finally gotten the chance to read The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ seminal dystopian novel for young adults, soon to come out as a major motion picture.

It has been a long time, a very long time, since I’ve read a novel that is this riveting, this exciting, this all-consuming. In fact, I don’t think I’ve read a novel that had me this overwhelmed since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and that Harry Potter novel had the distinct advantage of being the final story in a seven-book series that I absolutely loved AND of having been the subject of much anxious anticipation as I waited for it to be published.

I love Collins’ decisions in writing The Hunger Games. First, to write it in the first person narrative format, which creates an instant identification between reader and narrator (Katniss Everdeen). Second, to write it in the present tense, which not only instills an immediacy to the narrative (we experience the terrifying events as Katniss does) but also, so important in this kind of novel, ensures that the reader does not know until the final page of the novel whether our beloved narrator lives or dies.

I recognized some of the inspirations for the story immediately, most particularly Logan’s Run, the dystopian novel from the 1960s, written by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson (later to be transformed into a film starring Michael York), and Shirley Jackson’s classic short story, “The Lottery”, which I had read in high school. I admire both these works immensely and admire Suzanne Collins both for looking to them for inspiration and now for adding to the line of successful stories of this type.

Yesterday morning at work as an agonizing process for me, as I had to go to work despite the fact that Katniss and I had reached the Arena and the Games were in full flight. Children were dying at each other’s hands and our hero was suffering deeply, both physically and psychologically, as she struggled to figure out not just how to overcome the other Tributes in the Games but also how to manipulate the viewers and sponsors who can send help to her at key moments if she could only capture their attention and their respect.

The pull to continue reading was almost painful as I tried to focus on my work. Finally the lunch hour came and I could get back to the Arena.

And then I arrived at page 247, the beginning of the final section entitled “The Victors”. And everything changed. I don’t know what drove Collins to back away from everything she had worked so hard to create but she did. She turned this intense story of action and social commentary into a tragic romance. She gutted her character, changing her from a hard-edged, fast-thinking survivor with a conscience and a purpose into a weak-willed, wide-eyed over-thinker.

In case you haven’t read it (and it is, despite my disappointment with the last phase of the book, still an excellent read, which provides an interesting critique of reality TV, the debasement of the poor for the entertainment of the rich, the role and plight of women in our society and many other themes), I won’t go into detail about what happens in the end.

Suffice it to say, in my opinion at least, Collins fails entirely to write the final movement in the novel to meet the expectations created by the first 240 pages. It’s almost as if she got to the three-quarter point, realised just how real, how gritty, how incredibly difficult the world was that she had created and she decided she couldn’t put her character through it any more. She chickens out.

Up until page 247, I had no idea how the book would end. By page 250, I knew. And that’s too bad. I will now have to decide if I will even bother to read the next book in the series, such was my disappointment with the ending of the first. But I will go to see the movie, if only to see if the filmmakers did anything to improve the end of the novel.

Today's Photo: A friend stands in the waters of the Bay of Fundy at low tide.

Tags: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, Harry Potter, The Deathly Hallows, Katniss, Everdeen

Sports book number three from my Christmas reading list is The Only Game in Town, a collection of sportswriting from the well-known magazine, The New Yorker, edited by David Remick. This was yet another gift from my friend Rob and his family and it was an excellent choice.

Featuring 32 articles from a century of magazines, The Only Game in Town is a fun read. No, every article in the collection is not a winner – some are downright awful – but the vast majority are quite good and some are exceptional.

I particularly enjoyed the short piece by Ring Lardner titled “Br'er Rabbit Ball”, a 1930 article poking fun at the “juiced” baseball of the era. Lardner is a name I've heard before, more in the context of screen writing than sports or humour writing, but this was my first chance to read some of his work. The piece is a hoot, short, sharp and colourful. Lardner lives up to his reputation with this one.

Haruki Murakami's “The Running Novelist” is another winner. Sure, it made me a little jealous – this is a guy who opened a successful cafe coming out of university, then decided to gave it all up to write a novel. A novel which won a contest and led to a career as a writer. But the man can write and I am now feeling like I should go out and find his novels. This article, which describes not just his entry into the world of writing but also his decision to take up long-distance running, is beautifully written, a great introduction to his skills as a writer.

My absolute favourite piece in the collection, however, is Adam Gopnik's “Last of the Metrozoids”. Now, I was already well acquainted with Gopnik's excellence as a writer so the quality of this article came as no surprise. But I still came away impressed with the magic with which Gopnik weaves the stories of American art historian Kirk Varnedoe and his hopeless battle against cancer, the football team of eight-year-olds he coached in the last summer of his life, and the classic Hail Mary football game between Boston College and Miami.

One of the reasons this article reached me on such a personal level is that it reminded me so strongly of Rob, the friend from whom I received the book. Rob is an artist, a poet and knows more about fine art and art history than anyone I know. He's also a big fan of football so, as I read the article, I couldn't help but be reminded of him. I wonder if he's read this article: I know he'd love it.

Today's Photo: Action from McMaster football, a year before they won it all

Tags: Ring Lardner, Haruki Murakami, Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, Metrozoids, Kirk Varnadoe

My failure to blog of late has been caused mostly by my focus on reading my Christmas books and writing the next novel. But I have found a little time this afternoon to catch you up on my reading.

Since my last post, I have finished three books from my list and have started working on a fourth. The three I've completed are, in order: Abraham Verghese's Cutting For Stone; The Match, by Mark Frost; and Shatner Rules, by William Shatner (with Chris Regan).

Perhaps surprisingly, I really enjoyed all three, but for very different reasons.

Verghese's ambitious novel is by far the best work of recent "literature" I've read in a long time. Cutting for Stone traces the life and personal relationships of the narrator Marion Stone, from his dramatic arrival (with twin brother Shiva) in the delivery room of a hospital in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopa, through his eventful and heart-wrenching childhood dealing with civil strife and personal challenge, and finally to his medical career in the United States, where the various conflicting threads of his life come crashing together once again.

This is a beautifully written book which is at once fictional biography, political history, cultural study and medical drama. Marion Stone is an extremely likable character who recognises his own personal biases and limitations and comes to recognise the forces in his own life that made him who he is. His relationship with his twin brother is particularly well wrought, in all its complexity. It's too bad I didn't find the final movement, wherein Marion confronts more ghosts from his past, as convincing or effective as the rest of the novel.

One of the aspects of this book that particularly interested me was Verghese's portrayal and extended examination of the relationships between people of different races and social positions. Marion Stone is the son of an Indian mother and a white American father. His adoptive parents are both of Indian background but work and raise their family in an Ethiopian society that is mostly African but still heavily dominated by a recently ended Italian occupation. Although he doesn't foreground the racial tensions too strongly, Verghese never lets them disappear entirely either, recognising that racism and social oppression are a constant in our society.

I went from Verghese's rivetting tale that examines the challenges of racial oppression directly into The Match, a book that focuses entirely on the interactions of a group of wealthy, successful, incredibly empowered white American men, playing a game that was, up until that point, open only to rich, White men. It was an interesting transition for me as a reader.

Mark Frost's book is, in fact, intended to be a study of the conflict that arose in golfing circles between the traditionalists (who felt that golf should remain pure, the sport of gentlemen amateurs who could afford to spend hours each day honing their skills in practice and putting them to use in tournaments) and the new wave of professionals (white men from all walks of life who had managed somehow to find the time and opportunity to learn and perfect the game, despite their financial limitations, and to seek to earn a living on the golf course).

The core of the story is an almost mythical 18-hole encounter involving four golf legends: amateurs Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi playing an informal best ball competition against professional powerhouses Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan. Frost goes to great pains to portray Nelson and Hogan as heroes of the everyman, men from impoverished backgrounds who, by finding work as caddies at their local Texas course, managed to learn the game to the point of being able to challenge the well-heeled amateurs who had dominated golf for so long.

The surprise for me was how enjoyable and eminently readable Frost's book turned out to be. He does a great job both of bringing the four golfers to vivid life, presenting mini-biographies of each, and of capturing the excitement of their mythical match that day in 1956. I am, you see, a terrible but frequent golfer and an avid watcher of golf on television. I knew of Ken Venturi and Byron Nelson only through their work as on-air television golf analysts and of Ben Hogan only through legend (and a very early Peanuts cartoon). I had, to be honest, never heard of Harvie Ward.

Frost manages to protray each as sympathetic in his own way, providing ample support for the contention that all four contributed greatly to the development of golf in the U.S. Even more importantly, perhaps, he describes that match in 1956 with such passion, in such detail, that I found myself wishing I could have been there to witness it. His efforts on social commentary were not as effective for me, perhaps because I had just finished reading the Verghese novel which couldn't help but place Frost's examination of what amounted to be competition between two sets of wealthy, empowered white men into rather telling perspective.

Speaking of wealthy, privileged white men, next up on my reading list was William Shatner's comic biographical work Shatner Rules. The actor is now 80 and apparently has decided that, as he has survived to this impressive age and is still one of the busiest personalities in the world of entertainment, he is entitled to speak his mind, on any subject that should leap into it,

The book is actually a lot of fun, especially if you are able to swallow the fact that the former Captain Kirk has an enormous ego, matched only by his ability (and willingness) to poke fun at himself. Structured around a series of rules that Shatner claims to have lived by, the book is a quirky collection of anecdotes and life lessons from one of the more interesting people in Hollywood.

My favourite "lesson" from the book comes in Chapter 1. Shatner admonishes his reader to "Say Yes" in all situations and to all opportunities. To quote the Captain: "'Yes' means opportunity. 'Yes' makes the dots in your life appear. And if you're willing and open, you can connect those dots. You don't know where these dots will lead, and if you don't invest yourself fully, the dots won't connect. The lines you make with those dots always lead to interesting places. 'No' closes doors. 'Yes' kicks them wide open."

I think it's great advice. Maybe not to a teenager considering entering the world of sex, or drugs, or crime or whatever, but in most other situations. Shatner's book is really about how saying "Yes" to every opportunity has enriched his own life.

These three books were all very different but all remarkably successful in their own ways.

And now I'm on to P.D. James' Talking About Detective Fiction, a study of the genre I love so well by one of the finest, most eloquent writers I know. It's an absolute pleasure to read and I'm learning a lot, including the titles and authors of too many more books I have to add to my reading list.

Today's Photo: A dramatic tree against the skyline on the island of Grand Manan.

Tags: Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese, The Match, Mark Frost, William Shatner, Shatner Rules, P.D. James, Talking About Detective Fiction

An eventful week for me, both writing and reading.

First, the writing. My new year’s plan to attempt to use my lunch hour at work as a consistent window for writing has been working out very well. Since my photo blog ended with the close of 2011, I no longer have to take the camera out for a walk every lunch hour to find the day’s picture. This leaves me about 45 minutes every day to work on my novel.

I know, that doesn’t sound like a lot of time but it’s the consistency that’s important, not so much the amount of time. I find that my writing flows a lot more smoothly if I work on my project every day, if only for a couple of minutes. I start to get into a rhythm, not only with the writing itself, but also with the creative process inside my head.

When I’m working consistently, the plot and characters stay active in my imagination throughout the rest of the day. Even as I’m performing other tasks, my brain is reviewing what I’ve previously written to look for ways to improve it, considering plot developments to come and thinking about my characters and how their realities will influence the chain of events I’m planning for them.

This means that, by the time I finally sit down at the netbook at around noon every day, I end up with a very productive 45 minutes of writing. I have often planned so much in my mind that, even though I work non-stop for the entire period, with no pauses to wonder what comes next, I don’t actually get it all written in the time available.

That’s not a bad thing. I like walking away from the netbook with some things unwritten because that serves as a seed for more thinking, more planning, more creativity.

It’s January 13 and I’m already 15,000 words into The Final Curtain. I’ve introduced the major characters, killed off my main victim and launched the court-room plot. Not a bad start to the new year!

On the reading front, I finally found the back cover of Peter Robinson’s collection of short stories, Not Safe After Dark. Note, this is the expanded 2004 edition of the collection, which includes the Inspector Banks novella “Going Back”.

The book contains a series of short stories Robinson had written and published between 1990 and 2001. There is a very interesting variety to these stories, all of which offer some elements of a mystery but from different angles.

I can’t say I loved them all. In fact, and perhaps surprisingly, I found the three Inspector Banks stories to be among the weakest of the group. It’s possible Robinson, so adept at crafting full-length novels involving this protagonist, struggles to adapt him to the shorter genre.

That being said, I was particularly impressed with the stories with a historical slant, such as “Murder in Utopia”, “April In Paris”, “The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage”, and “In Flanders Fields”. Robinson has a particularly nice narrative voice that he seems to use solely for these kinds of stories, a voice that is more literary and lyrical than that used in the Banks tales.

He is also particularly good at focusing on the psychology of the situation, the philosophical and moral impacts of the decisions made by his characters. In “Murder in Utopia”, for example, the main character solves the murder but then faces the impossible choice of deciding whether the pursuit of “truth” should prevail over what is perceived to be the greater good for the entire community. The decision fractures the character and results in him making a significant, difficult decision with regard to this own life.

“Innocence” is another interesting psychological study, looking at the impact of simply being charged and tried for a heinous crime on an innocent, though socially odd man. I have to admit, Robinson’s story made me wonder at some of my own personal peculiarities and behaviour traits and how they might come to haunt me were I ever suspected of a brutal act.

I enjoyed this book because it gave me an opportunity to see a talented, successful writer experiment with other forms, genres and narrative approaches and styles. Some are successful, some are not. But I came away from this reading wishing that Robinson would spend more time on the historical, psychological stuff in the future.

Today's Photo: Spire and Wires, the tower at Gibson Memorial United Church in Fredericton's North Side is bisected by the city's ever-present electrical wires.

Tags: Peter Robinson, Not Safe After Dark, Mystery, Novel, Publishing, manuscript

I received a significant haul of books this Christmas, with a nice combination of subjects and approaches. I’ve received novels and short story collections, fiction and non-fiction, advice on life choices and help on my golf game, books related to sports, to entertainment and to writing itself. An amazing collection.

I make it a policy to read every book I receive as a gift and I’m not changing that this year, even though I’m a bit overwhelmed at this point.

First up was Bury Your Dead, a mystery by Canadian author Louise Penny. Since I received it early, before Christmas, I got a chance to read it from start to finish in the days leading up to the big celebration. And, wow, was it fantastic. I had never heard of Penny before receiving this novel but I enjoyed it so much I actually bought it for several other people as Christmas gifts this year.

And I’m planning to pick up more by her as soon as I finish reading my Christmas book list.

There are so many things to like about Bury Your Dead that I’m not sure where to begin. Most impressive, perhaps, is the fact that Penny weaves not one, nor two, nor even three plots throughout this book but a whopping four! And she keeps each one interesting and moving. Set in Quebec in the middle of a cold, snowy winter, the book is part mystery, part history, part psychological study. The pace is fantastic and the main character a fascinating study.

If I have one criticism it is that there are no really strong, interesting female characters in this book. Yes, there are a couple who make appearances but they are never really allowed to develop and take up a significant role in the novel. Penny’s major characters are all men.

I also read a football book called Blood, Sweat and Chalk by Tom Layden of Sports Illustrated. Intended to be a fascinating look at the creation of important tactical trends in American football, this book unfortunately delivers little more than a “wikipedia”-like article on each trend, filled with names and places but little actual substance. Even worse, Layden’s writing is surprisingly weak, rife with awkward passages, creaky connections and unfortunate comparisons. He desperately needs a strong editor but, since Sports Illustrated itself published the book, he didn’t get one.

I did come away from this book with a much stronger appreciation of the amount of work that goes into coaching football at any level in the United States but also with an increased unease over what appears to be a popular obsession with the sport among our neighbours to the south.

I am currently enjoying Not Safe After Dark, a collection of short stories by Canadian mystery writer Peter Robinson. Known for his Inspector Banks novels, Robinson brings together a series of unrelated stories he’s written over his career into this single collection, with an interesting introduction in which Robinson touches on the challenges posed to a novelist in attempting to write in the short story form.

I’m only part-way through so I will save any further comment until I’ve finished the book. Then it will be on to the rest of my Christmas stash!

Tags: Louise Penny, Peter Robinson, Tom Layden, Sports Illustrated, Bury Your Dead, Blood, Sweat and Chalk, Not Safe After Dark

Patti received a copy of Tina Fey's comic biography Bossypants for her birthday a while ago and, after waiting patiently for her to finish reading it, I finally got the chance last week. It's a fun read and provides some interesting insights into both Fey's life and show business in general.

I found Fey to be a genuinely modest person who usually credits luck (and other people) for her accomplishments and is quite open about her own failings. She's led an interesting life and has some helpful things to say. And she says what she has to say in a very funny way. I laughed out loud a number of times while reading this book and had many more chuckles along the way.

There are some bits I didn't understand, like her rant about Photoshop late in the book. I had no idea that there was such a debate over the issue of retouching photographs in show business so I didn't really feel it was necessary for Fey to give me four full pages supporting her own views on the subject (she's in favour of Photoshop but not when used to extremes).

One of the truly refreshing aspects of the book is Fey's honest (and often hilarious) discussion of what it's like to be a woman in the 40+ set in movies and television. An excerpt from the book on this subject had appeared earlier in The New Yorker, so I had received a bit of a preview of it, but I found Fey's comments to be at once insightful, inspiring but also quite dispiriting.

If you're looking for Hollywood gossip, you are not going to find it in Bossypants. Fey is consistently complimentary and respectful when talking about the other famous people she's encountered (even Sarah Palin, by the way). But if you want an interesting, fun read written by a thoughtful superstar, this book is really worth your time.

Today's Photograph: The Chateau Frotenac in Quebec City, as seen from the streets of the preserved 17th Century original town.

Tags: Tina Fey, BossyPants, Sarah Palin, Novel, quebec city

I am currently faced with the interesting challenge of drafting a promotion plan for a novel I wish to submit to a publisher for consideration. I have promoted many things in my life (both professional and personal) but this is a new challenge. How do you convince people (and, preferably, a lot of people) to purchase a print version of your novel?

I've convinced people to take courses, to attend workshops, to rethink their approach to problem solving, to consider a new career. But that's different, I think, from convincing them to shell out their dollars to buy my book.

I mean, I think my book is pretty good. I think it's well written and interesting; it has a strong plot and compelling characters; it will surprise you and hold you in suspense. But that's easy for me to say: how do I convince you to choose my book as your next source of entertainment and diversion?

The question came into even sharper focus recently when my elder sister found herself wandering around an outlet of one of the massive bookstore chains, looking in vain for help in finding the book she wanted to purchase. During her fruitless search, she came across a table set up in a small clearing among the shelves at which sat a pretty despondent and lonely looking person with a stack of books in front of her. This was an author, a Canadian author who obviously figured that setting up a table in Chapters would be a good way to sell some books.

And, apparently, after working very hard to convince the manager of the local store to allow her to do this, she had discovered to her immense sadness that she had been wrong: this was not a good way to sell some books. It was really just a good way to throw away four hours of your life that you'll never get a chance to live over again.

So my sister took pity and actually bought the book. My sister, by the way, is like that. She'll buy a book from a lonely author, give money to a freezing street person, tip a university student waiting tables at an East Side Marios a hundred bucks on a twenty-dollar lunch just because she knows what that tired but still friendly kid is going through.

And then she read the book. And she passed the book on to my other sister for her to read (which, of course, somewhat undermines the nice gesture of buying the book since she should have convinced my other sister to buy a copy of her own. But why pick nits?).

And my other sister Skyped me and said: "Hey, I just read this novel. It was published by this publishing house in Toronto and I kept thinking, as I read it, this publishing house should publish Mark's book. This one's really good but Mark's is even better. And they're somewhat similar so clearly this publisher would consider Mark's book."

My sister's idea is a really good one. I have reviewed this publisher's book list and my work would fit right in. So I'm going to submit it. But they require a promotion plan as part of that application so I have to think of ways to promote the book and convince people to buy it.

And I think we've already established that setting up a tale in a bookstore somewhere is really not an efficient way to sell your novel. Unless you think selling one book every four hours to a kindly sympathetic shopper who only found you because she couldn't find a salesperson to be efficient.

Which leads to a question: when you buy a novel, how do you decide which one to buy? And another question: the last time you purchased a novel by a writer you had never heard of, what convinced you to buy it?

Please send your ideas to me at mark.walma@gmail.com. I'd very much appreciate the help. I've already got some ideas of my own that I think are pretty good but I'd still appreciate your blockbuster thoughts as well.

Today's Photograph: The skyline (if you can call that a skyline) of downtown Fredericton (if you can call... whatever) taken from the north shore of the mighty St. John River at water level. Now that's a river!

Tags: Writing, Novel, Publishing, Mystery, chapters book store, skype

Yep. Must've been food poisoning. It faded away, right on schedule. Thank goodness for that.

My improving health has put me in better shape to catch up on my reading, especially my birthday reading! I was very lucky to receive a whole pile of interesting books for my reading pleasure, not the least of which are the first three hard-cover collections from Marvel Comics graphic version of Stephen King's post-apocalyptic masterpiece, The Stand.

The Stand is one of my favourite novels and I find myself re-reading it every couple of years. The plot is strong and compelling (not to mention frightening) and the multitude of characters are, almost without exception, beautifully rendered. I'm partial to the original, much edited version of the novel, in preference to the later-published "writer's cut" version, into which King re-introduced long passages that his original editors had the good sense to edit from the original.

I also own a copy of the DVD version of the eight-hour television mini-series adaptation of the novel from the 1990s. King was apparently involved in just about every aspect of the production: he wrote the screen play, chose the director, had a strong (but shaky) hand in the casting and even appears as a minor character. I own it but that doesn't mean I like it.

So I was pleased (and a little nervous) to discover this past winter that Marvel Comics was in the midst of doing a 25-comic graphic re-telling of the novel. I immediately went out and bought the most recent comic book (I think it's about number 16 in the series) and was very pleasantly surprised. So Patti was good enough to me the first 15 comics, neatly packaged into three hard-cover books.

I've zipped through these books and they are excellent. The comics are remarkably true to the original novel (well, to the "writer's cut" of the novel but you can't have everything). The art work is fantastic, the adaptation of the book is strong and the plot really moves, despite its attention to the detail of the novel. While the depth of characterization suffers slightly (but not nearly as much as in the TV mini-series version), the more textured scenes from the book are brought to vivid, enthralling life in the graphic version of the story.

The scene of Larry Underwood's trek through a darkened Lincoln Tunnel is the best of the bunch, so tactile, so densely claustrophobic.

And it's so nice to find that the Marvel artists have worked hard to present the characters faithfully as they are described in the book. This graphic novel is going a long way to cleaning the bad taste out of my mouth left by the TV show.

Tags: Stephen King, The Stand, Marvel, Comics, Graphic novel

A friend gave me the book, The Great War and Modern Memory, as a present recently. He's a political science professor and he knew of my interest in understanding what the average soldier went through during the First World War. I'm not really sure what sparked my interest but there it was... and my friend told me Paul Fussell's study was the best book he'd ever read on the subject.

Now, this book was assigned reading in a history of warfare course I took more than 25 years ago as an undergrad but I hadn't bothered reading it. I guess I was too young to appreciate the idea of understanding war through poetry and other forms of literature (and of understanding literature through war). So I'm pleased that my friend reintroduced me to The Great War and Modern Memory because it's a fascinating, frightening read. The fact that this academic text, originally published in 1975 with little fanfare, is still being talked about 35 years later ought to tell you just how good it is.

Fussell argues compellingly that the so-called Great War had a major impact on the literature of its own period and the periods that followed it, even on the language itself. He also points out that the poetry written during the war and the fictionalized memoirs written after it often provide a much truer picture of the lives of the soldiers in the trenches than do contemporary newspaper accounts, volumes of soldier's letters sent home, even the diaries of the soldiers themselves. The analysis is thorough and convincing and, though academic, the book is still accessible to the average attentive reader.

And Fussell manages to accomplish even more than simply providing hours of interesting reading. He's convinced me that I need to read the literature he discusses. I've already dug around for our old poetry anthologies to sample the works of Siegfried Sasson, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves and the like and now I believe I will have to try to find full collections of their poems, as well as other "memoirs" Fussell mentions.

In the meantime, Paul Fussell's book has already started to have an impact on how I read and understand history, how I respond to war and even how I watch shows like M*A*S*H. The Great War and Modern Memory is a worthwhile study for anyone with an interest in literature, history or war.

Tags: Paul Fussell, The Great War, Modern Memory, history, Siegfried Sasson, Wilfred Owen, poetry, World War One