Royal Whiplash: A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix

With The Hobbit heading to the big screen this weekend (and Shlomo's review shortly to follow!), Tolkien's beloved young adult novel finds itself back in demand. Many adults are likely picking it up for the first time, and who can blame them? Grown ups reading kid or teen books is hardly a new idea, as many of them are simply good stories, regardless of the way publishers choose to categorize them. As a bookseller I often encountered people who were surprised to learn that darker tales, like Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, could be shelved as "Teen Fiction". Recent years have seen many other examples of these books picking up an older readership, and subsequently being made into (often less successful) film adaptations: Coraline, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and certain other series that I'm disinclined to name aloud.

One 'young adult' author I've followed for some time is Garth Nix, a prolific writer of fantasy series including the Abhorsen trilogy, The Keys to the Kingdom, and The Seventh Tower, among others. As all of these demonstrate a propensity for strange and epic worldbuilding, with each universe’s set of abstractions and absurdities taken as mundane by their inhabitants. Nix's new novel, A Confusion of Princes (HarperCollins, 2012), is a foray into Space Opera territory that I knew would be grand and intricate. His fantasy background spills over, with his treatment of technology living up to Clark’s Laws. Going in I hoped this was to be the first book in a new series, and by the end I felt certain it would have worked better that way. The massive tomes of Harry Potter gave the lie to the idea that kids won't read big books (not that I believed it to begin with), and with multiple series under his belt, I'm not certain why Nix chose this route here.

Bad Guy Affirmation: Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph

Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Fix-It Felix Jr (Jack McBrayer) in Wreck-It Ralph

Ah, the arcade: that glittering portal to dozens of impossible worlds, where adventure and heroism get prized above all. While the titles and technologies have changed since the 70s, some characters remain staples in these childhood haunts. Year after year, they get shot by the same spaceship, stomped by the same hedgehog, or tossed off the same buildings into the same puddle of mud. Being a hero every day might be great, but a villain? Despised by children everywhere, with no recognition for that work? I know I’d long for a change after a while.

Wreck-It Ralph opens as Litwak’s Arcade shuts down for the night, when its pixelated inhabitants come alive. This prompts the obvious parallel with Toy Story, and Pixar’s John Lasseter even served as an Executive Producer here. As in the earlier Disney film, these game characters have lives of their own when humans aren’t around, venturing from game to game during the night. How to link these game cabinets and their respective worlds together? Use their power cords as a subway system of course, complete with a Game Central Station. Too cheesy for you? We're just getting started!

Flights of Fancy – Flight: Volume One

A panel from "Maiden Voyage" by Kazu Kibuishi (collected in Flight, Volume One)

One of the greatest joys of the web is that it provides unprecedented access to art. The range and scale of projects online grows daily, and artists who might otherwise have been unable or unwilling to start out in print now have new options. Some seem content to stay and play in the digital space, while others can build their online reputation into a means to rise in the print world. Such was the case for the artists and writers of Flight: Volume One. Editor Kazu Kibuishi has amassed a wide range of art styles, stories, and characters, if a slightly smaller range of quality. The volume showcases twenty-two young comic artists, all early in their careers in 2004 when it went to print. While 'flight' is not always explicitly featured in the stories, themes of childhood, adventure, and fantastical whimsy pervade each one.

Dwelling in the Details: The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker

Author Steven Pinker

I’m often told I dwell too much on words. During many an impassioned discussion I’ve heard people scoff “Semantics!” with a dismissive wave of the hand, as if I’m being too picky about the details (although what they’re often frustrated by is, in fact, pragmatics...but, well, you get the idea). But why not focus on the details, on accuracy? Human language can offer such a glorious range of nuance and character, and it provides one of the most crucial of links between our individual worlds and thoughts. Though not without their limitations, words form so much of our daily life. Yet we often lose sight of exactly how language shapes us, or how we shape it. As Linguist Steven Pinker rightly puts it, language helps to form, and is crucially formed by, The Stuff of Thought.

The book serves as Pinker’s third volume in two separate trilogies: one about language and the mind (which includes The Language Instinct and Words and Rules) and another on human psychology (featuring How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate). Each of these titles themselves make metaphorical, yet bold statements about the nature of our species. The Stuff of Thought rounds out each series with yet another declaration, confidently stating the ways in which human nature gets reflected in our language. Pinker argues that the linguistic tools we use, often without thinking, show us a great deal about ourselves, from our mental models to our culture to naming conventions.

The Thickness of a Thought: Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter's The Long Earth

As humanity grows well past seven billion people, our small planet begins to feel smaller. Many millions of us cluster around densely packed urban centres, with personal space – let alone land – an uncommon luxury. But what if the opposite were suddenly true? Instead of one Earth, we could walk between millions, with possibility of one day waking up as the only human mind on an entire world?

The Long Earth springs such an event on us one not-so-distant tomorrow, with the consequences explored by two renowned British imaginations: Terry Pratchett, known for his other, more fantastic alternate world in the Discworld series; and Stephen Baxter, a science fiction author with several trilogies under his belt (you may also have heard of his previous co-author, some fellow named Arthur C. Clarke...). Their first collaboration, The Long Earth brings out some of the best elements of each author's style – although those expecting the sillier, more outlandish aspects of Pratchett's fantasy won't find it here. Instead the novel follows a solid, if somewhat predictable science fiction exploration of how humans cope with the technological development of "Steppers": devices that allow instantaneous – if slightly nauseating – shifts from one version of planet Earth (and surrounding universe) to another. When the designs for such a machine get posted online, everyone from tech geeks to inquisitive children start building a way out of our congested world. With gold and natural resources now aplenty – but un-Steppable iron suddenly needed – the traditional ideas of value and wealth get turned on their heads. In search of both, people set out across a line of Earths that are much like ours, but with one small difference... none of them appear to have humans.

A Refreshing Sample: The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

If you remember anything about high school statistics or probability, some of this book should feel familiar. Whether this familiarity is a fond nostalgia or a kind of nervous queasiness comes down a matter of individual experience. Yet whether you hunger for a greater exploration of practical math, or tend to have difficulty stomaching it, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives is worth a try.

The eponymous metaphor of The Drunkard’s Walk refers to “a mathematical term describing random motion,” covering everything from the skittish dance of subatomic particles to the jolting and jarring of unexpected career paths. This exploratory explanation of chance comes to us from Leonard Mlodinow, a physicist whose random life experiences include lecturing at Caltech, co-authoring two books with Stephen Hawking, and writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation. With the goal of conveying the influence and chaotic beauty of randomness to those of us without such backgrounds, Mlodinow samples a wide range of mathly problems and their unexpected solutions. He shows us how the laws of mathematics permeate every aspect of our lives, touching on the predictable topics (sports, stocks, and surveys) and the not-quite-so-predictable (seances, online dating, McDonald’s).  This mix of subjects keeps each chapter unique, while Mlodinow’s writing manages to flow despite the periodic awkward transition or stilted paragraph.

Shakespeare’s Bookmark: Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

As a bookseller, I encountered rather mixed reactions to Canadian fiction. These tended to be something like Oh or Um or No Thank You. Usually, all three.

What is wrong with Canadian fiction, I would ask.

It is too bland, they would say. Too drab. I don’t like it.

Oh, I would say back.

And then I would offer them Come, Thou Tortoise in hopes of changing their minds.

The first novel of Newfoundland’s Jessica Grant, Come, Thou Tortoise wanders between two narrators. The first is Audrey “Oddly” Flowers, whose father lies in a coma after an accident – or as Oddly insists on calling it, a collision – with a Christmas tree. Oddly flies home to St. John’s to be with her family, stubbornly optimistic in the face of growing questions about her father and her future. Whether she’s inventing strange shovels, rescuing laboratory mice, or getting trouble with the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, Oddly’s voice made me smile from the first page.

In Every Person A Universe: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The dream of immortality seems like the ultimate goal. It drives careers, sustains industries, and unites humanity in pursuit of that most precious of resources: time. Most of us fret over how to spend it, with some working to earn more, some wishing it would pass faster, some trying to enjoy what little we get. For one Herietta Lacks, her lifetime was trying, painful, and altogether brief – and yet in a very real way, she may well outlive us all.

Released in 2009, Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks charts a remarkable history that is at once deeply personal and of global consequence. The book begins with a series of historical flashbacks to Henrietta’s life, as a black woman living in a small Virginia community in 1951 and finding herself diagnosed with cervical cancer. Skloot alternates these with chapters of her own journey of research decades later, as a journalist determined to learn about the donor of the HeLa (‘Hee-la’) cells used in biological research around the world.

Contains Almost No Robots or Explosions: The Internet is a Playground by David Thorne

When I was little, I often wished for a book with an infinite number of pages. It would simply carry on the story as I read it, it would never get boring, and it would provide my life with magic and amusement wherever I went. Of course at that age I didn’t realize that never-ending stories would be problematic, or that the web was about to be invented. These days people carry hundreds of volumes in their pockets, and hold in their phones a vast network of reading material that expands by the day. Whether the new forms of interactivity this lends to the once-humble book is for good or ill is a matter of debate, yet digital pages simply have more options than their static print counterparts.

Which is what makes The Internet is a Playground (Tarcher/Penguin, 2011) a rather ironic title to find in print. The volume amasses the emails, articles, and other written musings of David Thorne, an Australian satirist and design director. His blog, 27b/6, hosts most of these online exchanges, many of which have gone viral. The more notorious of these involve lost cats, pie charts, and Thorne’s attempt to repay monetary debt with a drawing of a spider.

Imagining the Unimaginable: The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester

As I fall in sync with a group of rush hour commuters, walking along in our daily parade, I give little thought or consequence to the land beneath our feet. A patch of dirt here, an errant pebble there. Only when we hear of some distant earthquake, or put a porous shoe through an unexpected rain puddle, does the average urban pedestrian remark on the earth we trod upon – if, in a modern landscape of asphalt and concrete, any such earth remains on the surface at all. Even in the greenest rural pastures, rarely do we have cause to wonder: over what does this seemingly solid ground lie? And even when this question does arise, our satellite images, modern geological equipment and the apparent omnipotence of Google can render an answer in mere moments.

Of course, this wasn’t always so.

Simon Winchester’s The Map that Changed the World (HarperCollins, 2001) takes us back to the English countryside of the late 18th century, to a man who asked these questions without any such resources to satisfy his curiosity. William Smith, a young surveyor with a passion for history and scientific enquiry, took it upon himself to map the strata of rock beneath England on a scale never before conceived, and – according to Winchester – thus secured his place among the founders of geology.

A Short Excursion into the Novel: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

When I first read The Eyre Affair (Hodder & Stoughton, 2001) a decade ago, its whimsical world enthralled, yet also perplexed me. Certain that many of its quips and literary references had flown clear over my young head, I felt inspired to go brush up on classic English literature. For The Eyre Affair is a book lover’s book, as Jasper Fforde weaves the familiar with the outlandish to create a novel that pays tribute to the cultural legacy of stories, while crafting a tale that’s remarkably original and unexpectedly smart.

Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair shows us mid-80s England through the looking glass, as described by police detective Thursday Next. In Thursday’s world, literature remains the pop culture medium of choice, the Crimean war rages on, and dodos make excellent pets. When an unusual book theft turns out to have links to Thursday’s past, she’s called in to help investigate. What follows is action-adventure that ranges from gripping thriller to Monty Pythonesque lunacy, climaxing with a voyage into Charlotte Brontë’s opus itself.

An Alternative Air Force: His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

The Napoleonic wars form the backdrop of many classic works of historical fiction. Epic battles, perilous sea voyages and political machinations lend themselves easily to countless adventures, several of which have translated to screen adaptations in recent years – think Master and Commander, or Horatio Hornblower. The era seems to provide no shortage of inspiration to the budding writer. One seems hard-pressed to find anything that would make an already fascinating period of history more exciting.

Well, what about dragons?

At first, this idea conjures up unsettling memories of unfortunately gimmicky dragon movies (I’m looking at you, Reign of Fire). The notion of playing this premise straight would seem even more outlandish, but Naomi Novik's His Majesty’s Dragon does just that – and does it well. Trying to weave the iconic fantasy beasts into such well-trodden literary ground seems a gutsy choice for a first novel, but Novik has managed: first published in 2005, it is the first book in the Temeraire series, which has now reached six novels and will last for at least seven. While perhaps not the most challenging read, the novel still manages to pose enough questions and provide enough seafaring fun to please both fans of the fantastic and historical fiction buffs with a quirky imagination.

Of Extremely Fat Birds and Nimble Young Tanks: Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine

Upon arriving in New Zealand, Douglas Adams observes the countryside and remarks:

“If you took the whole of Norway, scrunched it up a bit, shook out all the moose and reindeer, hurled it ten thousand miles round the world and filled it with birds then you’d be wasting your time, because somebody’s already done it.”

The whimsical chapter that follows includes a dizzying helicopter ride and treacherous hike through the mountains in search of a rare species of overweight booming parrot. I didn’t know parrots could boom before reading Last Chance to See. But that’s what I love about the book: how the unexpected comes intertwined with understated humour. While I’m busy laughing, I don’t realize I’ve learned something – something even more bizarrely wonderful for being true.

Last Chance to See takes the British humourist Adams, along with his zoologist coauthor, Mark Carwardine, on a series of global misadventures in search of some of the world's nearly-extinct species. Ostensibly with the goal of recording a BBC radio series of the same name, the pair visits these animals in their natural habitat, hoping to raise public awareness – and action – before these creatures vanish for good.

Forged in the Stars: Neil deGrasse Tyson's Death by Black Hole (and Other Cosmic Quandaries)

I first stumbled upon Neil deGrasse Tyson’s infectious love of space when I saw him interviewed on that most intellectual of science television programmes, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Tyson spoke with the articulation and intelligence born of years as a professional astrophysicist, yet with the youthful enthusiasm of a twelve year-old who dreams of exploring the galaxy. Whether working as an undergraduate lecturer or as director of the Hayden Planetarium, Tyson has committed himself to conveying a wonder and understanding of astronomy to the lay-person. Death by Black Hole (and Other Cosmic Quandaries) succeeds in this goal, depicting the vast and often daunting study of astronomy as a subject of fascinating awe, and as something we all can – and should – attempt to discover ourselves.

Published in 2007 by W. W. Norton & Company, Death by Black Hole assembles several dozen of Tyson’s essays from Natural History magazine, spanning from 1995 to 2005. These range from a discussion of how technology helps humans explore the universe, to how science informs and interweaves with human culture. As suggested by the book’s subtitle, Death by Black Hole takes an inquisitive approach to science, with each essay built around a unique space-based problem. While each chapter can stand alone, the book also manages to maintain enough intrigue and momentum to compel me to read several chapters at a stretch. Though an interest in astronomy certainly helps, the book makes a great introduction to the topic, owing its success to Tyson’s humorous and entertaining approach.

Take a Gamer's Holiday: Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One

Author/filmmaker Ernest Cline

Whether you recall the 1980s with a laugh, a cringe, or a roll of the eyes, it’s hard to help smiling at the joyful nostalgia that permeates Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. Written by the director of the 2008 film Fanboys, the novel speaks to that demographic in its native tongue, presenting a vision that will appeal to those with a taste for cyberpunk, oddball grail quests, flying DeLoreans, or old school gamer lore.

The premise seems simple: in the near future, a billionaire game developer leaves his entire fortune to whomever can solve a series of puzzles within his massively multiplayer virtual reality game, known appropriately as the OASIS. Since the challenge is open to all, everyone from basement dwellers to multimedia conglomerates clamor for a chance to control this digital universe, which has become the preferred platform for socializing, schooling, and marketing for much of the first world.

Enter Wade Watts, named in the alliterative tradition of such nerdy heroes as Clark Kent and Peter Parker. A teenager gamer living atop a stack of RVs, his family life and aspirations were decimated by the socio-economic collapse of the United States. To escape, he dreams of finding success and glory in the OASIS. Seeing the contest as his opportunity, he begins his hunt through the series of clues left by the game developer – who, it turns out, obsessed over 1980s popular culture. In this way Ready Player One takes a paradoxical approach to speculative fiction: in a bleak future, advanced technology seems unable to stop humanity’s steady decay, yet provides refuge in the form of retro gaming and classic movies.

A Wordless World: Shaun Tan’s Approach to the Silent Graphic Novel

We are pleased to welcome a new critic, Catharine Charlesworth, to our group.

Opening Shaun Tan’s The Arrival feels like cracking the spine on an old, treasured photo album. Both written and illustrated by the Australian artist, the entire book looks as if aged by time and travel: from the cover, with its seemingly-tattered binding and leathery texture to the washed-out sepia tones of the illustrations. This motif is entirely appropriate, as The Arrival reflects on immigration, of the wonder and confusion of making a new life in a foreign land. The narrative follows a nameless protagonist: a young father, who leaves his wife and daughter in their monster-ridden homeland to travel overseas in search of work, in hopes of making enough money to bring his family to live with him. The Arrival tells a classic immigrant story, and Tan’s design choices help him to convey it in a way that appears both familiar and fantastical.

Unlike most graphic novels, The Arrival tells its story entirely in illustrations. A wordless graphic novel, it contains no speech bubbles, no textual narration – no real written language of any sort. Because of this, the characters lack – in the traditional sense – any explicit internal dialogue or distinctive voice. Yet Tan has done this intentionally. His lack of detailed personality makes Tan’s hero a sort of Everyman: a character onto whom the audience can project their own experiences of immigration and transnationalism. The story at the heart of The Arrival has been told before, in many different tongues. To make this fantastical version accessible to cultures worldwide, Tan tells it in the transcendent language of images. The only written “words” in the book are in a made-up alphabet. These represent, rather than any particular phrases, the idea of writing, and its ability to baffle, humble, and alienate one who does not understand it.