Author Talk/Book Signing. Friday, June 16, 2:30 PM, Musquodoboit Harbour Library, Musquodoboit Harbour, NS.
Welcome one and all. Drop by if you’re in the neighbourhood.
Author Talk/Book Signing Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia. Friday June 16, 2023
Tag: #canadianbooks
Windows into Other Worlds: Gifts for the 2022 Holidays, North American Authors
To give a book is to give a window into another world. Here are five gift ideas for the 2022 Holidays. Today, North American authors. See last week for British authors.
First, a mystery/detective suggestion:
The Sweet Goodbye by Ron Corbett, 2022. Corbett has been nominated for both the Edgar and Arthur Ellis awards. The Sweet Goodbye is a complex tale of deceit and retribution set in the wild timberlands of Maine. Like Ian Rankin, Corbett doesn’t dish out genteel whodunits. However, Corbett’s fictional violence isn’t gratuitous; it’s part of life in the hinterland. [NB: The Sweet Goodbye may not suit fans of cozy mysteries.]
On Foot to Canterbury: A Son’s Pilgrimage by Ken Haigh, 2021. Shortlisted for the 2021 Hilary Weston Prize (Nonfiction). Do you have a traveler, hiker, or lover of English history and literature on your gift list? On Foot to Canterbury recounts a walk from Winchester to Canterbury, England, hiking the Pilgrims’ Way. The book delves deeply into England’s past. Haigh weaves together three main threads — travel memoir, English literature, and English history — producing a vibrant tapestry.
Stray Dogs by Rawi Hage, 2022. Shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Stray Dogs is a collection of sharply-etched stories ranging from Beirut to Montreal to Baghdad. All are sparsely told; all unfold with a quick, addictive pace. Full disclosure: A few of the stories didn’t grab me, but I’m hard to please. 😉 Regardless, Stray Dogs delivers far more delights than disappointments.
American War by Omar El Akkad, 2017. El Akkad won the 2021 Giller Prize for What Strange Paradise. American War is told with taut, clean prose. The novel’s apocalyptic post-oil storyline brings to mind Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The plot is inventive and disquieting. The post-oil world is artfully rendered. NB: The first 100 pages get mired in a few ruts. After that, the novel takes off.
A Season on Vancouver Island by Bill Arnott, 2022. Arnott is the award-winning author of numerous travel books and novellas. If your prospective giftee has visited Vancouver Island or plans to, present them with A Season on Vancouver Island, a travel memoir for all seasons. Arnott’s writing is humorous, poetical, and illuminating. For those yet to visit one of the world’s most majestic islands (and its surrounding archipelago), the book will whet their appetite and inform their journey. For those who’ve been there, the book will bring them back – to, as Arnott describes it, the language of ravens and the sound of sea-wash.
Author Talk/Gallery Exhibition Tour, Owen Sound, Ontario. Wednesday August 31, 2022
Tom Thomson Art Gallery Exhibition Tour, Owen Sound 6:00 PM & Author Talk at Owen Sound Public Library 7:00 PM, Owen Sound, ON. Directions | Website
The Gallery and Library are adjacent so you can walk from one to the other.
Broken Man on a Halifax Pier: A Personal Review
Broken Man on a Halifax Pier by Lesley Choyce, 2019. Dundurn.
Book reviews are supposed to be objective and largely impersonal. Caveat: This one is personal. Tune out if you wish.
Broken Man on a Halifax Pier swirls around Stewart Harbour, Nova Scotia, a fictionalized fishing post close to the real Sheet Harbour on the Eastern Shore, where I grew up. Although I left the shore at 17, I still feel it in my bones.
Some followers of this blog have been asking me to broaden my introduction. At the risk of boring others, here we go. [You can skip ahead to the review. See the last paragraph.] Shortly after leaving the shore, I headed to OZ, taking in the whole Red Continent, after which I kept goin’ down the road. Over a 20-year span, I “paused” to work many times – in Australia again and again, central and western Canada, the USA, England, and New Zealand – to fill my pockets and keep travelling, which I managed to do, seeing every continent except Antarctica. I only stopped because my pack was worn out. Just kidding.
But enough of my wanderlust. Back to the Halifax pier.
It could be that I’m prewired to like this book. Broken man on a Halifax pier happens to be a lyric from one of my favourite Stan Rogers songs: ‘Barrett’s Privateers.’
Now, the book review. To me, Broken Man on a Halifax Pier is an honest feelgood novel, not soppy but uplifting. I won’t recap the plot (I rarely do). Suffice to say, it’s a story of redemption and love. True love often comes across as unbelievable; I felt occasionally at sea as I read, but I didn’t mind. A beguiling woman (smart, sexy, and rich) falls for a completely down-and-out man. I fell for them and the setting. Choyce knows and loves the Eastern Shore. He brings it to life like no author has. For that, I am eternally grateful.
North Noir 