Favourite Books

In The Skin Of A Lion by Michael Ondaatje: Loosely the prequel to The English Patient, this book casts a spell in the most urban of settings, Toronto in the early 20th century. I found Ondaatje's writing hypnotic, and the fact that it is about familiar settings though set in the past, it just pulls me in even more. One book that I will read again and again, just for the spell it casts on me.

M Train by Patti Smith: This godmother of Punk has lived a deep rich artistic life, not only as an artist but as a patron as well. When she discovers a kindred, she delves with complete immersion into their life as well as their body of work. M Train follows Smith on her pilgrimages as well as her daily walks to show us a life rich in indulgence, in love, art and coffee. After reading this, I learned that her Punk image was very much a misnomer. She truly is a humble bohemian queen and a deep intellectual well of sweet discoveries and heartfelt remembrances.

The Diviners by Margaret Laurence: Part of what is known as the Manawaka period in Laurence’s library, The Diviners is another one of those projects with which she dealt cathartically with growing up in rural Manitoba, this time as a successful middle-aged writer living a quiet life in a cottage by an ever present river, trying to connect with her daughter and looking back on a life of struggling to find and then maintain her identity. I love this book for its idyllic descriptions of the river and her settled cottage life,  which I crave so much in my own life I also relate to all the conflicts that her character and Laurence herself had to deal with; the balance of the writer and the parent/spouse, the assertions of one’s own autonomy in face of outside pressures of assimilation and reconciliation for a past one cannot control nor outlive.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut:  As my reading palate was developing, I noticed that many of my favourite writers were being compared to someone named Vonnegut.  With a name like that, I thought he would be a huge eggheaded intellectual a la Heidegger or Wittgenstein, but in sooth, he is all that but so much more.  Slaughterhouse Five is inspired by Vonnegut’s experiences at the Bergen Belsen camp, yet he extrapolates from it a whole lot of things that have earned his place in what is called Gonzo Writing: alien abductions,  time travel and a wholly disjointed post-modern meta-fictional narrative, all unapologetically presented with a twisted, almost annoying, but insanely clever sense of humour. But what grabs me the most about this book is his perspective on time and memory.  He creates an alien race called Tralfamadorians that are able to see time as a fourth dimension, just like depth and height, consequently able to see a person’s life from beginning to end. Reading that, it managed to flip my perspective on life and had me take ownership of what has passed and what is to come, all there as a composite of concrete decisions and actions, thus making it another book that has changed the way I think.

Ulysses by James Joyce:  One of those notorious novels that most have been reputed never to have finished, I am among the ranks to admit the same.  That said, it’s a book that I often return to, simply because I love Joyce’s rhythmic riffing on language. When I read Ulysses, I feel like I am on a linguistic rollercoaster ride.  Though the sentences spin and roll and turn on a dime, it’s all connected and it forms as something luscious and gorgeous in my mind, like a sumptuous meal. When I put it down, I feel an almost opiate high that changes how I think, and consequently how I write.

On A Cold Road by Dave Bidini:  Like Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider, On A Cold Road is a book that I had wished and waited for as a glimpse into a favourite artist’s inner life.  Dave Bidini is the rhythm guitarist and occasional lyricist/vocalist for the band Rheostatics. If you were to pin him down and open his chest cavity, you would find that his heart, though certainly veiny and red in colour, is curiously shaped like a maple leaf.  Written after touring the continent with The Tragically Hip, Bidini recounts the travels and histories of the band, then expands on each point with interviews from such Canadian rock stalwarts as Rik Emmett, Frank Soda and Greg Godovitz. All told, you have a great tome for immortalizing that most unique of experiences; the Canadian Rock Scene.

Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese:  Awareness in indigenous issues has exploded in Canada and  that awareness has not been lost on me. There has been so many opportunities that have appeared in the last 50 years to start a path towards reconciliation, it has now become a new pattern in the fabric of our national consciousness.  Indian Horse is a deeply compassionate story about a survivor of the residential school system, finding redemption in the sport of hockey, but only through dedication to his own Anishinabeg heritage. In this story I see all the things that I have heard people say about Richard Wagamese, what a positive role model he was, what an accessible friend he was and how truly deep his intellect was.  He couldn’t have written a better testament to his own character than this.

The Life of Hope by Paul Quarrington:  Quarrington has always been known for his eccentric characters going through cockeyed existential crises and Life of Hope definitely has its fill of those.  What sets it apart from his other books (which I still love with unwavering devotion) is his beautiful depictions of idyllic lakeside ponderings, barroom camaraderie and heartwrenching prostrations to Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalize” (and yes, he is also why I like to use big words…)  Quarrington seems to encapsulate all the deepest human conditions in the most mundane and/or absurd places, and in doing so, manages to portray what it really means to be completely human.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac:  To me, Kerouac is one of the foundational writers of the last century.  It was his writing that brought about a continental shift in how fiction is approached, the dividing line between the old and new.  After my first read of this book, I opened myself to the expanse of the world around me, sleeping with open windows, driving with eyes on the vanishing point ahead on the highway and cultivating a willingness to indulge in every beautiful experience that life will afford me.  In short, this book changed my life.

Ghost Rider by Neil Peart:  Few men have had as much of an influence on my thinking as Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for the rock band Rush.  His lyrics read like a manual for being a man, with a complete moral set, and all the zest for adventure and calls for strength that manhood often entails.  Written as a salve after losing both his daughter and wife in the span of a year, the book documents Peart's motorcycle journey from one extreme of the continent to the other in an effort to deal with his grief and his struggle to come to terms with the world he’d been left in.  When my parents passed away within 10 months of each other, Ghost Rider acted as a reference for my own grief and was instrumental in my negotiating my own pathway to healing. Another life changing book for me.

Salvage King, Ya! by Mark Anthony Jarman:  This book was the final component I needed to realize what my narrative voice would be. Everything Jarman writes is like a poetic elegy, with delicious turns of phrase and a musical rhythm that cries to be read aloud.  He also has way of integrating the Canadian secular world in everything he writes; hockey fights, deer hunts in the mountains interrupted by bears, Rheostatic songs playing in smoky bars and wooden decks jutting out into glacial lakes from which you witness a plane crash…  His writing is everything to me.