Addressing the needs of young readers, part 2

In Edinburgh, Scotland, where unemployment has risen to over 18% and 23% of households fall under the low-income threshold, stability has been found in a somewhat unlikely place: a local library. Turning young, rambunctious patrons of the Sighthill library into respectful, law-abiding citizens was a matter of talking to regulars, taking stock of their needs, and addressing them.

Now offering a range of new programs and facilities — everything from a football literacy project to IT classes and creative writing courses held by guest authors like Irvine Welsh — the library may have contributed to some astonishing changes. Reports Peter Hetherington of The Guardian, “Since introducing the new regime, police have reported a two-thirds drop in the number of ‘youth calls’ in the [surrounding] area between 2004 and 2005. At the same time, complaints from library customers over anti-social behaviour have dropped by three-quarters.” And with some of the techniques used at the library being tried out in over two dozen other locations across Edinburgh, Sighthill library administrators were the recent recipients of a prestigious ‘libraries change lives’ award given by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals at a ceremony in Birmingham.

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Click here for the story from The Guardian

Addressing the needs of young readers, part 1

The Seattle Times website features an interesting report on a continuing trend in some high school reading lists. Interspersing arduous classical texts with contemporary works by women and ethnic minorities seems to have led to a decreasing proportion of books written by dead white men and an increase in books by the likes of Yann Martel, Toni Morrison, and Maxine Hong Kingston. This replicates a trend seen in the 1960s and ’70s, in which books like Go Ask Alice and The Catcher in the Rye were making appearances on required reading lists. And though, in recent years, works like Julius Caesar have occasionally been dropped from school curriculums due to lack of interest from students, it is uncertain as to just what percentage of books on current high school English curriculums are by contemporary writers. But one statistic may be telling: a survey conducted in 1993 found that the ’60s and ’70s trend had not caused any of the 10 most-required books to be supplanted. You’ll know what they were, but we’ll provide them again: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Julius Caesar, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, Of Mice and Men, Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, and Lord of the Flies.

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Click here for the story from the Seattle Times

Go, poetry!

A new website devoted to Canadian poetry has recently been launched. Edited by poets and reviewers Dani Couture and Alex Boyd, who also organizes Toronto’s IV lounge reading series, the Northern Poetry Review bills itself as “an online home for reviews of poetry books, articles and interviews, with emphasis on the Canadian poetry scene.” With an aim to include work and reviews from writers from across the country and a design that exudes an air of sophistication, the site currently features a lengthy review of Anne Carson’s most recent collection, Decreation, by American poet James Arthur, and an interview with poet and frequent Q&Q contributor, Zach Wells.

Related links:
Click here to visit the Northern Poetry Review

Harper’s bid for totalitarianism backfires

What’s the best way to sell a book? Recent events surrounding Mark Tushingham’s book, Hotter Than Hell, suggest that a little controversy can’t hurt. In Other Media linked last week to coverage of the Harper government’s apparent attempt to prevent the author, a scientist with Environment Canada, from speaking publicly about the book, a sci-fi novel set in the near-future in which the effects of global warming have prompted a war between the United States and Canada over water. Released five months ago to poor sales by Saint John firm DreamCatcher Publishing, Hotter Than Hell started flying off the shelves last week when Tushingham was sent a letter from the office of Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, ordering him not to attend an event promoting the book in his hometown of Ottawa.

The CBC reports: “Democratic or not, there’s no denying the ban has been great for business. More than a week after the incident, Margaris is still giving national interviews about it and has ordered a double-sized second printing to keep up with a sudden demand for the book….

Tushingham still isn’t talking about the book, but Margaris says she forgives the government for muzzling her author.

In fact, she says she might even send a thank you card for the publicity, once she catches up with all the back orders for the book.”

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Click here for the story from CBC.ca

The books on screen

In the world of filmic adaptations of books, good books don’t necessarily make for good films, and great films are not always based on good books. A panel of experts gathered by The Guardian has just announced what it calls the top 50 book-to-film adaptations, and the newspaper is calling for readers to vote on their favourite.

The picks run from amusing (The Day of the Triffids) to predictable (The Godfather, Goodfellas, and Apocalypse Now), from discerning (Bladerunner, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Ken Loach film Kes) to contemporary (Brokeback Mountain and Sin City). There is also one Canadian title: The English Patient.

Related links:
Click here for the Guardian‘s list

On the graphic memoir

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently posted an article on its website about the rise of graphic memoirs, or memoirs in comic book form. This news itself isn’t so noteworthy: with numerous autobiographically inspired books like Art Spiegelman’s Maus (published in 1992), Chester Brown’s I Never Liked You (1994), Craig Thompson’s Blankets (2003), and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis books already in existence, memoirs have long been a staple category in the comix genre. What’s interesting is the continuing acceptance of the form mainstream publishers, as shown by the glut of graphic memoirs slated for release this year from conventional trade publishers like HarperCollins, Knopf, and Houghton Mifflin.

The other thing that’s unusual is that the exact subject matter of these new memoirs differs somewhat from the traditional historical and youth romance paragons of the genre. Houghton Mifflin’s upcoming release is Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, about Bechdel’s closeted gay father and her childhood spent in the family funeral home, while Dragonslippers, by Rosalind B. Penfold, is about an abusive relationship. (The latter was first published in Canada by Penguin Canada.) There are also three new graphic novels that take personal looks at cancer.

Related links:
Click here for the piece from the Philadelphia Inquirer

Might is right

In what appears to be an attempt to keep a lid on the pot of global warming, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose has barred Mark Tushingham, a scientist for Environment Canada and the author of the sci-fi novel Hotter Than Hell, from speaking publicly about his book. Set in a proximal future in which global warming has caused certain parts of the world to be uninhabitably hot, the novel features a war between Canada and the U.S. over water resources.

Scheduled to speak in Ottawa about his book and the science behind it, Tushingham was stopped by an order from Ambrose’s office. “He got a directive from the department, cautioning him not to come to this meeting today,” his publisher Elizabeth Margaris of Saint John’s DreamCatcher Publishing tells the CBC. “So I guess we’re being stifled. This is incredible, I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Tushingham has also cancelled some promotional appearances on TV and radio.

The CBC reports: “A spokesperson for Ambrose said the speech was billed as coming from an Environment Canada scientist and even though his book is a work of fiction, he would appear to be speaking in an official capacity.”

Meanwhile, a recent story in The Globe and Mail sees Stephen Harper denying allegations that his government is planning to make cuts to Environment Canada programs. Strangely enough, the interview takes place in the newly revamped, world-class military training facility in Wainwright, Alberta. In the spirit of our government, In Other Media gives you permission to throw your hands up in disgust, or at the very least, to furrow your eyebrows.

Related links:
Click here for the CBC Arts piece
Click here for the Globe and Mail story

McDonald’s gears up for Fast Food Nation film

Film blog Cinematical recently featured a short, comical report on McDonald’s full-scale PR campaign on the eve of the release of the filmic adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s book, Fast Food Nation. Blogger Martha Fischer writes, “Among the tactics reportedly being considered are a ‘truth squad’ (maybe they’ll carry around a giant, inflatable fry), a ‘campaign to tell the real story’ (‘Massive amounts of fat are good for you!’ ‘Animals totally love factory farms!’) and, most tantalizingly, efforts to ‘discredit the message and the messenger.’” Good grief.

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Click here for the Cinematical piece

Mr. Mock-turtleneck and Blazer gets in trouble again

The world just can’t seem to leave its wealthiest conspiracy theorist alone. The latest incident in the Da Vinci Code money grab sees Mikhail Anikin, a Russian art historian, vying for a public apology and a slice of the Brown pie as compensation for Dan Brown’s alleged use of at least two of his theories in The Da Vinci Code. The theories in question hold that Leonardo Da Vinci was both a painter and a theologian and that his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, is not a portrait so much as an encoded theological message on the state of the Christian Church that combines the images of both Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Anikin told the Agence France-Press that he shared these theories with colleagues in Texas, one of whom asked if he could impart the information to “a detective book author that he knew.” Anikin says he granted permission on the condition that the theory be attributed to him if used in one of the author’s books.

Anikin is threatening Brown with a lawsuit if compensation and an apology are not promised within the next couple of days. Keep up to date on the news with In Other Media, who finds that a happy side effect of all these lawsuits is that she can intelligently discuss DVC at cocktail parties, despite never having read the book.

Related links:
Click here for the story on the Book Standard website
Click here for the report on CBC.ca

Judgment Day: The Story of My Life, Not Guilty in a Trial by Fire on the Island on a Good Day to Die

Consulting with the American Library Association, which compiled a list of commonly used book titles, the Associated Press lets us in on what a few of them are and the issues that surround them — including the confusion that ensued when an American library patron made a request for Leap of Faith, the memoirs of Queen Noor of Jordan, and got the Danielle Steel novel of the same name instead.

Common titles for autobiographies include My Life and The Story of My Life, at least 20 books are named Trial by Fire, and dozens bear The Island as a title. Other repeats include My Sister’s Keeper, Not Guilty, Judgment Day, A Good Day to Die, and Time and Time Again, which suggests that the trend is largely isolated to genre fiction. Still, In Other Media would love to go into a bookstore, ask for a book called My Life, and be handed the autobiography of Isadora Duncan.

Related links:
Click here for the story on that arbiter of all things newsworthy, msnbc.com