From Rex Murphy's introduction to the program:
"Despite the fact that the world is wired, and that the computer and its
urchin offspring the laptop are "hooking up" more lives, it is a comfort to
know that the humble book, whether Penguin or parchment, retains the loyalty
of millions.. remains a comfort, a solace and an uplift, that turning one
leafy page after another is the chosen pastime, recreation, edification and
ecstasy of individuals from one corner of this country to another. The book
is the natural tributary, the perfect channel, carrying one mind's well
garnished freight to another, and whether it be novel, poem, essay or
excursus, there can be no fitter vessel, for heft, portability, texture,
scent and feel, than, in all its myriad bindings, shapes, and design than
our great familiar.. the book.
For some, the approach of summer also means in varying degrees some loosening of the reins of preoccupation and employment, an unbinding of the attention to mundane or urgent pressure of living: for various reasons summer is a reading season. What is read is as crazy and mixed as the recreations we choose or where we choose to have them. Titles scanned last winter, weighty tomes of deep philosophy or recondite politics, the fluff of Spillane, the cat musk of Barbara Cartland, the dense and beautiful involutions of Nabokov, the macho liquorice of Tom Clancy, or the crafted wordiness of Ondaatje, Proulx, or Pete Dexter.
Recommending books is the only pleasure superior to reading them. There is no snobbery here. We run the gamut from the Edge Westerns to Spinoza. As the author of Ecclesiastes would have it, of the making of books there is no end, and as Anthony Powell titles it, books do furnish a room!"
REX'S RECOMMENDATIONS:
"Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman" by James Gleick (Pantheon
Books, 1992, Random House, 1993)
"Speak Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov (Random House)
"Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov (Ardis Publishers, 1983, Doubleday, 1984, Random
House, 1989)
"Pale Fire" by Vladimir Nabokov (Random House, 1989, David McKay Company,
1992)
"Bleak House" by Charles Dickens
"Coleridge" by Richard Holmes (Oxford University Press, 1982) also
"Coleridge - Early Visions" by Richard Holmes (Penguin, 1990)
"Goat's Song" by Dermot Healy (Harvill, Harper Collins, 1992)
"Real Presences" by George Steiner (University of Chicago Press, 1991)
"Paris Trout" by Pete Dexter, (Viking Penguin, 1989, Random House, 1988)
Any Anthony Price novels (featuring "Colonel Audley")
"Silas Marner" by George Eliot
"Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives" by Allan Bullock (McClelland & Stewart,
1993)
"The Theory of the Leisure Class" by Thorstein Veblen (Viking Penguin, 1994)
CHUCK FUREY, Newfoundland's Minister of Trade & Technology:
"The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston (Random House)
"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien (Houghton Mifflin)
"This Quiet Dust" by William Styron (Vintage International)
"The Prints of Chistopher Pratt" with essays by Jay Scott and Christopher
Pratt (Breakwater books with the Myra Goddard Gallery)
BRUCE POWE, author of "Outage: A Journey Into Electric
City" (Random House):
"Independence Day" by Richard Ford (Little Brown).
"A Diving Rock On the Hudson" by Henry Roth, the second volume of the
seven-volume novel "Mercy of a Rude Stream" (Saint Martin's Press).
"Oswald's Tale, An American Mystery" by Norman Mailer. (Random House)
"The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin - 1910-1940" edited by Gershom
Scholem (University of Chicago Press)
Two old favourites:
"The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann (Knopf classic series)
"Look Homeward, Angel" by Thomas Wolfe (Scribners)
BUZZ HARGROVE, President, Canadian Auto Workers' Union:
"Shooting the Hippo. Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths" by Linda
McQuaig (Viking)
"The Wealthy Banker's Wife" by Linda McQuaig (Penguin, 1993)
"Storming the Pink Palace. The NDP in Power: A Cautionary Tale" by Patrick
Monahan (Lester Publishing)
"On the Take" by Stevie Cameron (Macfarland, Walter and Ross)
"Class Warfare. The Assault on Canada's Schools" by Maude Barlow and
Heather-Jane Robertson (Key Porter Books)
"Labour's Dilemma. Gender Politics of Auto Workers in Canada, 1937-1979" by
Pam Sugiman (University of Toronto Press, 1994)
"Hard Lessons: The Lives and Education of Working-Class Women in
Nineteenth-Century England" by Jane Purvis. (University of Minnesota Press,
1989)
Also recommended: "Dissent" - a U.S. magazine published twice a year.
JANINA FIALKOWSKA, concert pianist:
"A Dog's Life" by Peter Mayle (Knopf)
"Wildswans" by Jung Chang (Anchor Books)
"Szymanowski" by Teresa Chylinska (Twayne Pulishers Inc. and the Kosciuszko
Foundation - NY)
"Our Mutual Friend" by Charles Dickens (Oxford Illustrated Dickens).
"The Daughters of Cain" by Colin Dexter (Crown)
"Mozart" by Maynard Solomon (Harper Collins)
"Maigret et La Vieille Dame" by Georges Simenon (U.G.E. Poche - Presses de
la Cite)
"Our Game" by John Le Carre (Knopf)
"Elephant Song" by Wilbur Smith (M & S)
"Le Rendez-vous des Saints" by Henry Steinberg (editions Pierre Tisseyre)
"Exploring Scottish Hill Tracks" by Ralph Storer (Warner books).
LAURIE GREENWOOD, co-owner of "Greenwoods' Bookshoppe"
in Edmonton:
(Last summer's big sellers)
"The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf Canada)
"The Stone Diaries" by Carol Shields (Vintage Canada)
"The Shipping News" by E. Annie Proulx (Simon and Schuster, Maxwell
Macmillan in Toronto, 1993)
(This year's big sellers)
All of the above, but particularly "The Stone Diaries"
"The Piano Man's Daughter" by Timothy Findley (Harper Collins)
"Swann - A Literary Mystery" by Carol Shields (Stoddart)
"The Alienist" by Caleb Carr (Bantam)
Laurie's personal favourites:
"100 Years Of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Harper Collins)
"The Discoverers. A History of Man's Search to Know his World and Himself"
by Daniel Boorstin (Random House)