| Directness, intensity, minimalism: these are some of the adjectives critics turn to when writing about poet Robert Creeley’s work. Creeley died on March 30 at age 78, of complications from a lung infection. His long and prolific career took him from Harvard, to ambulance driving in India, to North Carolina’s Black Mountain College in the 1950s, to San Francisco in the 1960s. Creeley taught at several American universities and at the University of British Columbia. When he became ill he was still working, at a writing retreat in Marfa, Texas.
"There were no books when I was a boy. Books were hardly accessible, yet there were some books." So begins Ticknor, Sheila Heti’s first novel. Novelist Catherine Bush finds the book "slim, strange, ultimately convincing." Discover it for yourself when Heti reads at Pages on Kensington, on Monday April 11 at 7:30 p.m.
McNally Robinson offers an eclectic series of events between now and next Thursday. To start at the end, there’s filling Station's Flywheel Reading Series on Thursday, April 14 at 7 p.m. The readers are Palmer Olson, Leif Bardoy, Garth Whelen and Samuel Garrigo Meza.
On Monday, April 11, you can enjoy lunch downtown and hear a discussion of Charlotte Jones's play Humble Boy. The play, which runs at Theatre Calgary from April 12 to May 1, was a popular and critical success in London in 2002. At the time, Jones told the National Theatre that she couldn’t decide whether the play is a comedy or a tragicomedy. Maybe the folks from the University of Calgary and Theatre Calgary will clarify that in their discussion. That’s at noon at McNally Robinson.
On Saturday, April 9 at 8 p.m. at the bookstore, two books about The Mustard Seed Street Ministry are being launched. 83 Cents collects photographs and captions by Joey Podlubny, a photographer who spent time with homeless people in the city. Dr. Gerald Hankins's Miracle on Centre Street tells the story of the people of The Mustard Seed.
Finally, doctor and mountain climber Peter Steele, who wrote The Man Who Mapped the Arctic, gives his first-hand account of what happens when things go wrong on Mount Everest. He launches Doctor on Everest at McNally Robinson on Monday, April 11 at 7 p.m.
Best-sellers
Best-selling books for March 28 to April 3 at Pages on Kensington
Fiction and Poetry
1. Afterall
by Lee Kvern
2. Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
3. Hunger's Brides
by Paul Anderson
4. The Runny Babbit
by Shel Silverstein
5. The Evil B.B. Chow
by Steve Almond
6. Whetstone
by Lorna Crozier
7. Cry of the Icemark
by Stuart Hill
8. Break, Blow, Burn
by Camille Paglia
9. The Hatbox Letters
by Beth Powning
10. Leaving Home
by Anita Brookner
Non-fiction
1. Lilac Moon
by Sharon Butala
2. A Short History of Progress
by Ronald Wright
3. 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know 2
by Russ Kick
4. Blink
by Malcolm Gladwell
5. Terry
by Douglas Coupland
6. Doris McCarthy: 90 Years Wise
by Doris McCarthy
7. Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things
by Gary Geddes
8. Plan B
by Anne Lamott
9. French Women Don't Get Fat
by Mireille Guiliand
10. John Kenneth Galbraith
by Richard Parker |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.