Happy go lucky

Mike Leigh has a new one, and it looks like it's as close to an opposite of Vera Drake as you could get – thank god*:



(Note the name of the unborn baby late in the trailer – I'm taking that as a good omen.)


* VD being the one Leigh film I'm not all that crazy about, mostly because it was too earnest and stiff-backed, a strange thing for a director responsible for some of the most painfully funny (and funnily painful) moments ever put on film.

Pricks and profanity

Glenn Beck's boy book problem and some thoughts on cussing over here.

AWOT in the Toronto Star and the Edmonton Journal

Two new reviews of the book over the weekend.

In the Toronto Star, Beverley Stone wrote:

Nathan Whitlock's snapshot of semi-suburban/rural Canada is not your parents' classic Canadian novel [...] It's not Whitlock's storytelling that makes me queasy, or the fact that he has a new take on what it means to be a small-town Canadian, but the feeling that maybe he's got it right. A Week of This might be the truth.

Mathew Halliday, in the Edmonton Journal, wrote that:

The novel is full of intimately suggestive details [...] A nod as well has to be given to the dialogue, especially the inventive and rhythmic way the characters swear. Some of the exchanges are laugh-out-loud funny.

Pyper envy

Some thoughts on literary envy from Andrew Pyper over here.

Down to the dirt nap

The good news is: the podcast of the episode of CBC Radio's Talking Books I was on is now available for download. (The one called "Down to the Dirt.")

The bad news is: I appear to have killed the show.

IFOA, Okay

Just heard that I've been invited to the International Festival of Authors, aka the "CanLit Kahuna," aka the "Big Readsy," aka "IMFOA!"

Over there

I did mention I was over here these days, didn't I?

Okay, good.

AWOT in the Montreal Mirror and The Globe and Mail

A Week of This got a mention in the Montreal Mirror's "Hot Summer Guide," alongside new books by David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, Pasha Malla, and the like.

(The article also mentioned Toby Barlow's "werewolves in LA" novel Sharp Teeth, which I reviewed for the Toronto Star, and which I happily recommend. It's a fun read.)

AWOT was also reviewed in The Globe and Mail this weekend, and while the review was mixed (can't win 'em all), it did call the central character of Manda "an impressive and unsparingly true-to-life creation."

Number two with a bullet

Look, I know it doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, and I know it's just one store, and I know it probably won't last much longer than it takes to read this post, but all the same, I'm taking some pleasure in the current (as of date above) bestseller list over at Collected Works in Ottawa.

Look see:



So, if you live in the Ottawa area, and you haven't yet picked up a copy of the book, and you wish to ensure my continued dominance over the powerful Cheapeats monopoly, you know what to do and where to go to do it.

The waiting is the hardest part

Some thoughts on the unnecessarily masochistic – even for writing – process of getting a story published in a lit magazine over here.

Open for business

If you are looking for me, I'm over here.

Bo

... is no mo.



"Quit mumblin', and talk out loud" is still the best advice, and the toughest to heed.

(But then, there are just as many great songs that counsel "silence, exile, and cunning." What's a boy to do?)

Open Book

Just started my Writer in Residence tenure at Open Book: Toronto, where I'll appear all through June.

My first post here.