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Words Worth Reading
A
decidedly monthly newsletter from Words Worth Books~Waterloo's
favourite bookstore! |
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Welcome to
our March newsletter!
 Although
our e-mail newsletter reaches you only once per
month, you can view daily updates on book news,
reviews, interviews and book giveaways
on our book store blogs.
We are also "open" 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week, for shopping on our fully
searchable database and order desk, viewable at
www.wordsworthbooks.com Click on any book
cover in this newsletter to get to our ordering
page.
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An independent bookstore is the heart and soul of
a community. Words Worth Books has been a landmark
on King Street for 25 years!
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Words Worth Books
(519) 884-2665
100 King St. S
Uptown Waterloo
www.wordsworthbooks.com
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Meet Christopher Moore! |
Contact us for details: Words Worth Books
519.884.2665
Directions to First United Church |
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Mark Your Calendar! |
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We're busy planning the details of our
Words Worth Hearing Author Series, but
for now mark your calendars! Complete event
details to come:
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May 5: Russell
Smith (Girl Crazy, April) and
Nicholas Ruddock
(The Parabolist)
May 12: Sarah
Hampson (Happily Ever After Marriage) and
Judy Fong Bates
(The Year of Finding Memory)
May 26: Guy
Gavriel Kay (Under Heaven)
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Reading In February
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Despite the distractions from Vancouver, I got
through several books in February. Here's what I
learned:Making Toast - that
grieving is about caring for the living
IOU - that what we don't know
about financial instruments can drive us into
bankruptcy
An Altar in the World - that you
can meditate without a consistent prayer life
Where the Gods of Love Hang Out -
that love is messy
The Bread of Angels - that the
darkest hour is just before dawn
Making Toast (HarperCollins
$25.99) is a memoir by the author and playwright
Roger
Rosenblatt about coping with their daughter's
death. Roger and his wife Ginny move in with their
son-in-law and three young grandchildren following
the sudden death of their daughter, a surgeon in
her thirties. Roger is responsible for rising
early and making toast for the family, a
six-year-old girl and two boys, four- and
one-years old. Their father, Harris, is also a
surgeon. All of them are broken-hearted and
struggling to carry on: making meals, driving to
lessons and play dates, doing laundry, packing
lunches, getting through the day. Roger is not an
emotional or sentimental guy. He approaches his
daily tasks with humility and takes pleasure in
sharing time and stories with his grandkids. He
continues to teach one day a week at a college
some five hours away. I was touched when he
mentioned driving through a stop sign as a clue to
his grief-muddled mind. (I'd done the same thing
recently.)
 I.O.U.
(why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay,
M&S, $32.99) is by the novelist John Lanchester.
He was dismayed to the point of anger by the
economic meltdown starting in fall 2008 and sets
out to uncover how it happened. His lack of an
economist's background is to the reader's benefit.
If he can't make sense of the financial
derivatives that added trillions to the instant
shuffling of worldwide investments, then, just
maybe, those derivatives were way too risky. This
is why governments and their central banks were
also sucked in. Bubbles are ever with us.
 Barbara
Brown Taylor was an Episcopalian priest who
stepped down from the ministry (as described in
Leaving Church).
An Altar in the World (HarperOne
$16.99) continues her spiritual journey, beginning
with her pulling down the barriers between
organized religion and spirituality. Each chapter
is an answer to the question she was asked by an
Alabaman priest whose church she was asked to
preach to: "Come tell us what is saving your life
now?" The practice of being present in the
natural world and with other humans is part of her
answer, but also learning to say no, to feel pain,
to set aside a Sabbath each week, and finally the
practice of giving blessings, all figure in this
map of faith.
 Amy
Bloom is the only fiction I tackled last month.
I'm a fan of Away, the story of a Jewish immigrant
to New York in the 1890s whose odyssey takes her
across America and up to Alaska in an attempt to
return to Russia and the daughter she left behind.
Where the God of Love Hangs Out
(Random House $29.95) is set in modern day and
consists of two groups of short stories each
focused on a different couple. Clare is married to
Charles but is drawn to their longtime friend
William, even though she and his wife Isabel are
also friends. Their affair will end in two
divorces but middle-aged love involves aging
bodies: William suffers from gout, and Clare
breaks her ankle. The second group of stories
focuses on the parents of a girl who barely
survives a bout of flesh-eating disease, her
social worker and doctors. Bloom has a
breath-taking ability to convey feelings between
her characters with a stark minimum of
description.
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*So Much for That* by Lionel Shriver |
Lionel Shriver's new novel, So Much for
That is everything I 've come to expect
from one of my favourite writers with a major
difference.A writer that I frequently hold up
as an antidote to much best seller fare has
written a novel that is ripped from the headlines
pertaining to America's health care debate. So
Much For That is full of flawed characters who con
and bluster their way through their days, all
orbiting around Shep Knacker; a fundamentally
decent fellow who has meticulously planned a
second life escape route, an Afterlife.
"Shep wondered and kept wondering, if you could
at least survive in places like East Africa on a
dollar a day, how well could you live for
more like twenty bucks?"
Several false starts in the Afterlife have
resulted in passing years and mounting tensions in
the marriage. After living frugally, selling a
successful home repair business and working
for the new owner who resents Shep's continued
influence in the company, he's bought three one
way tickets for his wife and son.
Shep is ready to lay his cards down. He's
picked a date a few weeks into the future and
says he's going with them or he's going alone.
Glynnis has come home from a doctor's
appointment with news of her own. She's been
diagnosed with mesothelioma, a particularly
malevolent strain of caner caused chiefly by
prolonged exposure to asbestos.
The "insurance company from hell" basically
torpedoes the Afterlife and the novel rests on
what happens to a dream deferred. There are two
other medical subplots in the novel via an
employee at Shep's place. Jackson is a
politically-charged fellow who continually works
himself into lather via blogs and talk radio and
has a self-inflicted medical problem he can't
hide from his wife Carol for much longer; and
their daughter Flicka is stricken with FD or
Familial Dysautonomia, an extremely rare genetic
disorder that attacks the body's nervous system.
All the attributes for a fine Shriver piece are
here. She is relentless. She has a terrific
ear for the conflict present in any home and
writes genuine dialogue to match. No one is
unscathed and she simply demands more of her
reader than most novelists that I know of.
That said, and despite a harrowing trail for
everyone; So Much For That gives the reader an
almost happy ending, bearing in mind that this a
novel for discerning adults.
-Dave
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*The Parabolist* by Nicholas Ruddock |
Nicholas Ruddock's first novel is a book that
I'm very much enjoying at the moment.
The Parabolist hits that great spot between
having literary chops and a genre-bending plot
driven story.
Staid old Toronto is nudged into a city more
resembling a crumbling South American
metropolis filled with bombastic characters
and a cinematic touch.
Parabolist:
noun (1) one who speaks in parables. (2) a
member of a splinter group of disaffected
young poets in Mexico City c. 1975. (3) a
practitioner of the art of concentrating
multiple sources of energy into a single
focus, illuminating or, if left unchecked,
destroying everything in its path.
Part comedy, part mystery, The Parabolist is a
novel about murder, sex, the medical
establishment, poetry and vigilante justice on
the streets of Toronto in 1975.
We're very pleased to welcome Nicholas
to Words Worth Books as part of our
Spring author series, and as he lives in
Guelph; we'll even get him home at a decent
hour.
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*The Girl Who Fell From the Sky*
by Heidi Durrow
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 At
a reccent book conference this winter, I met Heidi
Durrow, the author of this engaging debut novel.
She was a lovely young lady and even sent me a
handwritten note a few days after we met. Though
that is not why I think you should read this
novel. I think you should read this novel because
it is FANTASTIC! The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is
about Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and
an African American G.I. who becomes the sole
survivor of a family tragedy.
When Rachel's strict maternal Grandmother
becomes her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly
Black community. She must learn to straddle the
white world of her early childhood with the Black
world of her present. She learns to swallow her
grief to survive her new life. The book takes a
surprising turn when she meets Brick, someone from
her past who is desperate to find her and share a
message that will help to heal her pain.
I found this hard to put down and finished it in
a day. The book is the winner of the Bellweather
Prize (created by Barbara Kingsolver) for best
fiction manuscript addressing issues of social
justice. I think there is lots of discussion
potenial with this book and I would highly
reccomend it for book clubs.
- Bronwyn
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*The Savage Detectives* by Roberto
Bolano
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 The
Savage Detectives was recommended to me by one of my
old university professor's a few weeks ago. I had
never heard of Roberto Bolaño, but as so often
happens, now that I am aware of him I seem to see
references to his work everywhere I go.
I have a fondness for Latin American literature. I
named my cat after Jorge Luis Borges, for instance.
I must be out of touch, though, because apparently
Bolaño is the biggest thing in Latin American
literature from the past 20 years.
The Savage Detectives is loosely based on Bolaño's
own life, only with a lot of poetic license
employed. It follows the lives of two young poets on
a quest- what the quest is for is not quite clear at
times, giving the novel a nicely Quixotic feel. The
story is in three parts, the first narrated by a
naive young poet who idolizes the two central
characters, the second by a series of interviews
with people who have varying impressions of them,
and the final part returns to the same narrator as
the first, who has grown somewhat disillusioned with
his former idols.
I liked the fractured nature of the story telling,
and the implicit nods to the history of Latin
American literature... Bolaño was very critical of
Latin American literature that came before him, and
you can almost see him delighting on riffing on
stereotypical themes of the genre.
As one time aspiring poet myself, I really enjoyed
the focus on characters who value poetry above all
else. The characters are so extreme, almost militant
about their choice to live the poetic lifestyle... I
chose the gentler charms of a bookseller's life
myself.
--Caroline
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*Eat Memory* ed. Amanda Hesser |
 This
collection of food writing from the New York Times
Magazine is a really great bed-side table book. No
matter what else I was reading, an essay from this
collection finished off my day on a thoughtful and
interesting note. The length of the pieces tends
to be fairly brief, and the majority of them end
with a recipe that relates to the anecdotal
content of the story.
I never thought I would be interested in Julia
Child, but the tone of her piece was so
unpretentious and funny, about her final exam at
the Cordon Bleu, that now I'm considering reading
her longer food writing. I'm not sure if the
Cordon Bleu was sexist, or just hated Americans,
but they sure seemed to have given Julia a hard
time. She ended up being tested on the simplest of
recipes, and in the end had to admit that she was
over complicating things.
This emphasis on simplicity recurs throughout the
book, and was really refreshing. Many of the
pieces are not even written by food professionals.
One of my favourite essays was "Bean There" by
Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is an insufferable
conservative republican that has been on CNN for
years, sporting a too-tight bowtie that presumably
cuts of air supply to his head. The funny thing
was, I really enjoyed his piece. He wrote about
working at a baked beans factory during his
college years, and for once I found his tone
charming and unpretentious and his analysis of the
baked bean industry hilarious.
What I enjoyed most about this collection was how
food was linked to a common humanity--everybody
eats, even New York Magazine types, and it was
interesting to have so many perspectives on the
subject. I may not make any of the recipes in the
book, but I will certainly start reading the New
York Times Magazine food column.
--Caroline |
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*The Edible City*
by Christina Palassio and Alana Wilcox
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(Our Apologies for missing Christina
Palassio's name in the February newsletter!)
The Edible City is a collection of
short essays about Toronto and food. The overall
tone of the selections is thoughtful and balanced,
and the range of topics is pretty comprehensive. The
bulk of the pieces deal with food ecology and the
difficulty of eating locally sourced meat and
produce in a metropolis.
One of the pieces I found the most interesting was
Sarah B. Hood's "Pickerel, Pork and President's
Choice; A historical food map of Toronto" which
detailed the city's relationship to food production
in days gone by. Descriptions of Toronto in the
1800's, when the financial district was a series of
orchards, really blew my mind. Next time I visit
Toronto and have to cross Bay Street, I know I'll
feel a little twinge thinking about how once,
instead of steaming man hole covers, horn blaring
cabs and glass monoliths, where I stand was a breezy
orchard, full of bees buzzing and birds chirping.
This is not to say the collection is anti-progress,
a lot of time is spent on Toronto as a
food-processing mecca. In "High off the Hog: Hog
town as food processing hub" Steven Biggs looks at
the history of Toronto's factories and the hand they
had in forging the community. I had no idea how many
factories there are within the city limits of
Toronto, or that it served as a hub for the eastern
sea-board in food transport.
A lot of the essays dealt with restaurants, and how
Toronto measures up against other cities in the
world for food. Toronto has to be praised for it's
diversity of cuisine, and the innovative way it
meshes ethnic and domestic fare. I found it really
interesting that while in other cities such as
Paris, ethnic food is gets toned down and made more
like the region's cuisine, Toronto tends to the
exact opposite- foreign cuisines that come into the
city end up influencing our food, so you end up with
Mexican poutine or Thai hot dogs.
The collection left me wishing someone would put
together something similar about Waterloo region;
not to mention hungry.
-Caroline
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Book Club *Musings* |
During March we'll be reading
M.J. Hyland's This Is
How.
M. J. Hyland is the multi-award-winning and
Man Booker-shortlisted author of Carry Me Down.
Her third novel, This Is How, is a
psychologically probing and deeply moving
account of a perpetual outsider longing to find
his niche. When Patrick Oxtoby's fiancée breaks
off their engagement, he leaves home and moves
to a remote seaside village. In spite of his
hopes for a new and better life, Patrick
struggles to fit in and make the right
impression. Certain that his new friends are
conspiring against him, and with his already
fragile personality further fractured, he takes
a course of action that permanently alters his
life.
Our future book club picks include:
Our main Book Club meets on the fourth Tuesday
of each month. Our next discussion date is
on March 23rd, at 7 pm, in store. Contact
Mandy at
mandy@wordsworthbooks.com, or phone the
store directly at 519-884-2665, for more
information.
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Dude's Book Club *Musings* |
Our Next Dude's Book Club Pick:
Birdman by Mo Hayder
Thursday March 25th
Greenwich , south-east London . The Met's
crack murder squad, AMIP, is called out by
nervous CID detectives to a grim discovery.
Five bodies, all young women, all
ritualistically murdered and dumped on
wasteland near the Millenium Dome.
When a post-mortem examination reveals a
singular, horrific signature linking the
victims, officers realize that they are on the
trail of the most dangerous offender known to
the force: a sexual serial killer.
Detective Inspector Jack Caffery, young,
driven, unshockable, finds himself facing both
hostility within the force and echoes of his
past in this, his first case with AMIP. He is
tortured by the knowledge of a death long ago
that he might have prevented. Now, as he
employs every weapon that forensic science has
to offer, he knows he has only limited time
before the chaotic, sadistic killer strikes
again. (From
Mo Hayder's Website)
Our Dude's Only Book Club meets on the
fourth Thursday of each month. Our
next discussion date is on March 25th. Contact
Dave at
david@wordsworthbooks.com,
or phone the store directly at
519-884-2665, for more information.
Our April Book Pick is
A Test of Wills by Charles Todd
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First
Words
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Here are the first words from a book selected
randomly off our shelves:
From The Spice Necklace: A
Food-Lover's Caribbean Adventure by Ann
Vanderhoof
This time, I bring my rolling pin to the
Caribbean.
I also bring my rat, Ramon T. Raton (made
from a small coconut), and my elderly
stuffed monkey, Curious George, a companion
since childhood; my best pots and knives (and a
proper sharpening steel); more baking pans and
serving dishes; my trusty pressure cooker; two
dozen tea towels; six stemmed wineglasses; three
of my favourite silicone spatulas (all the same
size and color); a digital kitchen scale; and
one lonely electric appliance, a wand
hand-blender with attachments that whisk and
chop.
Of course, my husband, Steve, comes too. He
calls himself my official taster and, aided by a
lightning-fast metabolism, he's an unstoppable
force when it comes to food. West Indian market
women adore him--setting commerce aside to chat,
tucking an extra piece or two of fruit into his
bag, routinely giving him big hugs hello and
goodbye--and cooks can't resist spoiling him,
especially since he looks like he can use a few
thousand extra calories. Inevitably, he's the
one who's given the largest fish, the plate with
the scoop of the extra something, the invitation
to "take a taste" of whatever's in the pot.
This is Phase Two.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
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Care and Feeding of the Backlist |
At Words Worth Books we not only have
on hand the most recently published titles, we pride
ourselves on the importance we give to the backlist,
books that have continuing value years after their
publication. So don't miss this great read a second
time!
This month's backlist selection is:
The Rum Diary by Hunter S.
Thompson
Last
week was the 5th anniversary of Hunter S
Thompson's death. It seems crazy
that it's been 5 years already!
I read The Rum Diary 10 years ago. I was working
at a candy store in Toronto at the time and I
would go to the Chapters next door and read a
chapter every lunch hour. The story itself is
pretty simple, a reporter goes to Puerto Rico,
drinks a lot, and steals some guy's girlfriend.
The book is quite unlike the bulk of Thompson's
work, instead of the bitter, drug addled screeds
against American complacency, we get a simple
story. But that simple story is so full of energy
and youth and fun, that it provides a refreshing
change of pace to his other dark, albeit hilarious
work.
Anyway, re-reading The Rum Diary is a nice way to
remember HST- not as the twisted gun crazy
iconoclast that he became, but as the young, devil
may care sports reporter that he started out as.
--Caroline |
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*Books and Babies* |
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Books for Kids |
 At
Words Worth Books we keep a close eye on our
children's, young adult, and teen sections in the
store, because these are formative reading years
and we love to see the best books in the right
little hands. We have fantastic recommendations
for baby shower gifts, birthday gifts, or
just-because occasions for the special young
people in your life. Drop in or phone ahead and
ask us to assist you in these sections of our
store, and have a guided look through the books
that we hand-pick for our shelves. Here are just
some of the books that we're loving this month:
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 Dear
Zoo is a fun treat, 25 years after
its initial publication. The story goes where
every good board book should go--a patterned
question and silly answer format where babes and
toddlers can learn how to anticipate each page.
Plus, who doesn't love lift-the-flaps?
Dear Zoo
has simple and sweet illustrations in eye-popping
colour, sure to grab attention. And you'll fall in
love with the last gift from the zoo, a proper pet
to keep!
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Chester's Masterpiece by Melanie Watt
I love
the Chester books by Melanie Watt! In Chester's
Masterpiece, he proves his creative genius,
elbowing the real author, Melanie, out of the way.
What follows is a picture book mash-up of
scribblings, post-it notes, and clashing egos, as
Chester flamboyantly takes over the story, armed
with his big red marker.
Chester's Masterpiece takes longer to read than
most kids' picture books-there is just so much
happening on each page. He pops out from behind
the page, erases what Melanie has written, and
doodles in his own story ala Harold and the Purple
Crayon.
Kids
will always have a blast reading the Chester
books!
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Tunnels by Roderick Gordon
Will Burrows has a strange family. The only
thing he has in common with his father is his
passion for archaeological exploration. The book
opens with Will and his dad digging up an
abandoned tunnel below London, and find the
beginnings of a major secret. Then his dad
disappears and strange men are following Will.
Tunnels is a great read; action-packed and
mysterious. Each chapter opens up a whole new
set of questions and kids will be lured into the
story by Will's quest to save his father and
uncover his family's secrets. Tunnels reminds me
of the best parts of City of Ember, Kiki Strike,
and even H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. Tunnels
is the first book in the trilogy.
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 The
Prince of Neither Here Nor There by Sean Cullen
"This is a story about Faeries. Not Fairies.
There's a big difference, and it isn't just that one
is spelled with an "e". Fairies are ineffectual
little things that flit about in children's stories,
shoot magic dust into people's faces, and dress up
in flower petals and all that hooey. Insipid little
things! No. No. No! The Faeries we will be dealing
with are something different altogether! They are a
noble race, an ancient race, often marvelous and
magical but just as often deadly and dangerous. I
hope you are up to this. If not, put down this book
and back away carefully"
Told
through a hilarious and sometimes unreliable
narrator, The Prince of Neither Here Nor There is a
great hero myth adventure story. Brendan has a
terrible time at school and it gets worse when he
finds out he is a Faerie who's been lost to the
human world. Once he figures this out, he starts to
feel himself turn into something more Faerie than
human. When a strange group of otherworlders begins
to tempt him to use his Faerie powers for evil,
Brendan must figure out where his allegiances
lie-with the Faeries or with humans. I was surprised
by how funny the story was too; there are footnotes
and hilarious asides to the main action throughout
the story. |
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 Hearts
at Stake, The Drake Chronicles #1 by Alyxandra
Harvey
I
personally don't think the popularity of vampires
in teen fiction is going anywhere anytime soon.
Twilight was a good read at the time, but Hearts
at Stake, the first book in The Drake Chronicles
series by Canadian author Alyxandra Harvey, is
something different. It's funny and the story
centers on characters around the vampires, as mush
as on the undead themselves.
Solange
Drake is a vampire princess, and unique as a
creature in that she's the only vampire to have
ever been born, not created. And she's in danger.
She and her royal family have enemies on all
sides, including a bounty hunter intent on revenge
for his father's death. When Solange is kidnapped
by a rival vamp queen, her human friend Lucy has
to team up with Solange's overprotective brother
to find her.
Hearts
at Stake has a double romance as the four main
characters battle to help Solange retain her true
role as future vampire queen. A refreshing break
from the usual vampire theme.
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Fun Ideas for March Break! |
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*New and Notable*
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Click on picture to see availability or to
order
We've Got Issues by Judith Warner
The Amazing Absorbing Boy by Rabindranath
Maharaj
Union Atlantic Adam Haslett
Big Girl by Danielle Steel
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Marry Him by Lori Gottlieb
Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Infinite Possibilities by Mike Dooley
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*New* in Paperback! |
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Click on picture to see
availability:
Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home by Maria Finn
Acedia and Me by Kathleen Norris
Skim by Mariko Tamaki
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells
Tower
What Becomes by A.L. Kennedy
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Columbine by Dave Cullen
It's Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong
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The Fine Print |
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Words Worth has a few entertaining
blogs!
Our main blog, a Teen blog, and a Book Club Blog.
We are on facebook but not Twitter.
WWB provides books for off-site
events at Perimeter Institute and CIGI events, among
many others. Contact us to have books at your
event. |
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