Seen Reading: The Book!

They say that animals are sensitive to the weather and will respond to the slightest variation in the air around them or the tiniest tremor beneath their feet.

There are reports of strange behaviours among the elephants of Yala National Park in Indonesia in the hours before the epic tsunami decimated the shoreline. The elephants were running inland, away from the beach.

Even the domesticated animals that we keep as pets can sense these things. Cats in the yard can sense their prey before they see it.

Their ears detect the smallest sound and nose catches the scent only moments before they arrive at our feet with the precious gift of a fresh kill.

Of course in book publishing these things rarely happen so quickly.

*

Julie Wilson is a Literary Voyeur.

She has a special sensitivity to the books and the readers among us in our natural urban environments. She lurks innocuously by the door of the street car seeming preoccupied by a thread on her scarf or a particularly egregious grammatical error in some ad copy on a passing transit shelter.

She sees what you’re reading. She can see that you’re halfway through a dogeared paperback and she knows that given the intensity of your concentration there’s a good chance that you’ll miss your appointed stop.

She recognizes the listless reader of popular paperbacks. The lovers of the memoir. The young man trying to understand why anyone in the world would ever try to read the Mayor of Casterbridge much less actually finish it but dammit the good looking guy that he met last week at the Pour House says that it’s his favorite book ever and, well, sometimes you just gotta make the effort.

Her observations are not just field notes.

Julie is not merely tracking the fluttering presence of paper-based entertainment products along the thoroughfares and park benches of our cities.

When Julie Wilson sees someone reading in public she sees a story in progress. The story emerges to Julie as her imagination elicits context from the person’s demeanor, their dress, the book that they’re holding, its vintage and specific edition. What those influences and others trigger in her becomes a point of departure for her own creativity.

Her writing, infused by a strong visual poetic sensibility, leaps from that moment and captures something for the reader - an image, a hidden joke, memories of fishing expeditions, youthful moments – that shine distinct and unique for their consideration.

*

The magic of Julie’s book exists not only in the immediacy of her language or the power of her imagery but in the intimate relationship that the book shares with its audience. Readers of the earliest stories on the internet and the community of Literary Voyeurs who shared their sightings on twitter get a special delight in seeing a print edition of Julie’s vision.

Seen Reading is a collection of microfictions.

These short bursts of poetic prose are inspired by Julie’s encounters with readers and their books during her travels across Toronto.

Many of the pieces are short enough to be read between stops on the bus but they’re rich enough to stay with you for the entire day. But it’s not just the stories that stay in your mind but the little personal details about the person and the book that Julie saw that inspired the piece.

Why that particular detail and why that book in that specific edition? Who are these people, where are they coming from? What happened in that moment that provided the creative trigger for Julie? What am I saying to the people around me when I’m reading on the bus? Is anyone paying any attention? Are they parsing my details? Is this book impacting the reality of the people around me?

It’s like quantum reading.

Aren’t we always making up stories in our heads about the people that we see?

What does it mean that the pretty young woman is reading a Shopaholic paperback, or that the collared priest is clutching an edition of Byatt’s Possession, or the nappy rasta on the Bloor Line is engrossed by Malcolm X’s autobiography?

Or that you, dear reader, have downloaded the ebook to your touchscreen tablet?

*

The cat is in the yard with its nose twittering and its ears alert to the presence of tasty prey.

Those birds sure are making a lot of noise in the branches of that tree. A clamour, in fact. Why don’t they come down here to the nice warm grass for a little game?

*

Julie Wilson sensed the disruption before it arrived and she knew where to take cover.

She understood and intuited the calamitous changes that were about to assail the reading public as ereaders, tablets, ebooks, eink and digital commerce turned the traditionally placid waters of book publishing into a sea of unpredictable drama.

Julie was a popular book blogger when book bloggers were an industry scourge. She was there when indignant tweets boomed from corner offices, when weekend books pages ceased to exist, when the normally retiring publishing industry came face to face with their readers for the first time as the tech titans battled for control of their mere content.

Julie is still there riding out the storm in the safest place imaginable: among the true fans of books, the readers.

Despite the countless attempts to kill the book it continues thrive. Even Seen Reading’s publisher, the valiant indie press Freehand Books, has recently returned from the brink to publish again!

It is a fitting detail that Seen Reading’s print edition is published by an independent press from Calgary, Alberta (the aforementioned Freehand Books) while also being simultaneously distributed as an ebook by Harper Collins Canada.

It’s a unique partnership, I think, and like most things in this book it shows what’s possible.

Seen Reading is an homage to the power of books in people’s lives and an homage to readers.

It is a significant and timely addition to our literature.

It is an optimistic book that shows us the poetry and potential in the simplest things that we do.

Altered Book by Rachael Ashe

Canterbury Trail

It’s the last ski weekend of the season and a mishmash of snow-enthusiasts is on its way to a remote backwoods cabin. In an odd pilgrimage through the mountains, the townsfolk of Coalton—from the ski bum to the urbanite—embark on a bizarre adventure that walks the line between comedy and tragedy. As the rednecks mount their sleds and the hippies snowshoe through the cedar forest, we see rivals converge for the weekend. While readers follow the characters on their voyage up and over the mountain, stereotypes of ski-town culture fall away. Loco, the ski bum, is about to start his first real job; Alison, the urbanite, is forced to learn how to wield an avalanche shovel; and Michael, the real estate developer, is high on mushroom tea.

In a blend of mordant humour and heartbreak, Angie Abdou chronicles a day in the life of these industrious few as they attempt to conquer the mountain. In an avalanche of action, Angie Abdou explores the way in which people treat their fellow citizens and the landscape they love.

Book of Ice

Antarctica, the only uninhabited continent, belongs to no single country and has no government. While certain countries lay claim to portions of the landmass, it is the only solid land on the planet with no unified national affiliation. Drawing on the continent’s rich history of inspiring exploration and artistic endeavors, Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky has put together his own multimedia, multidisciplinary study of Antarctica. Book of Ice is one aspect of this ongoing project.

In light of climate change and tireless human enterprise to be present everywhere on the planet, Miller uses Antarctica as a point on entry for contemplating humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The two additional contributors to The Book Of Ice – Columbia University’s Brian Greene, best selling author of The Elegant Universe, and Ross A. Virginia, Director of Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College, a world renowned expert on Antarctica – add several layers of analysis to the books exploration of the theme of science and graphic design.

An excerpt from Chapter One of Indian Horse:

My name is Saul Indian Horse. I am the son of Mary Mandamin and John Indian Horse. My grandfather was called Solomon so my name is the diminutive of his. My people are from the Fish Clan of the northern Ojibway, the Anishinabeg, we call ourselves. We made our home in the territories along the Winnipeg River, where the river opens wide before crossing into Manitoba after it leaves Lake of the Woods and the rugged spine of northern Ontario. They say that our cheekbones are cut from those granite ridges that rise above our homeland. They say that the deep brown of our eyes seeped out of the fecund earth that surrounds the lakes and marshes. The Old Ones say that our long straight hair comes from the waving grasses that thatch the edges of bays. Our feet and hands are broad and flat and strong, like the paws of a bear. Our ancestors learned to travel easily through territories that the Zhaunagush, the white man, later feared and sought our help to navigate. Our talk rolls and tumbles like the rivers that served as our roads. Our legends tell of how we emerged from the womb of our Mother the Earth; Aki is the name we have for her. We sprang forth intact, with Aki’s heartbeat thrumming in our ears, prepared to become her stewards and protectors. When I was born our people still talked this way. We had not yet stepped beyond the influence of our legends. That was a border my generation crossed, and we pine for a return that has never come to be.

These people here want me to tell my story. T hey say I can’t understand where I’m going if I don’t understand where I’ve been. The answers are within me, according to them. By telling our stories, hardcore drunks like me can set ourselves free from the bottle and the life that took us there. I don’t give a shit about any of that. But if it means getting out of this place quicker, then telling my story is what I will do.

It was social workers at the hospital who sent me here. The New Dawn Centre. They call it a treatment facility. The counsellors here say Creator and the Grandmothers and the Grandfathers want me to live. They say a lot of things. In fact, they talk all the time, and they expect us to do the same. They sit there with their eyes all shiny and wet and hopeful, thinking we don’t see them waiting. Even with my eyes on my shoes I can feel them. They call it sharing. It’s one of our ancient tribal principles as Ojibway people, they claim. Many hearts beating together makes us stronger. That’s why they put us in the sharing circle.

There are at least thirty of us staying here. Everyone from kids in their late teens to a few in their thirties, like me, and one woman who’s so old she can’t talk much anymore. We sit in circles all day. I tire of talk. It wearies me. It makes me wish for a drink. But I endure it, and when my counsellor, Moses, ushers me into his office for one-on-one time, I endure that too. I’ve been here a month, after six weeks in the hospital, and that’s the longest I’ve been without a drink for years, so I guess there’s some use to it. My body feels stronger. My head is clear. I eat heartily. But now, they say, the time has come for the hardest work. “If we want to live at peace with ourselves, we need to tell our stories.”

I can’t tell mine in the circle. I know that. There’s too much to sort out and sift through. And I’ve noticed the younger ones getting all twitchy in their seats the few times I’ve tried to speak. Maybe they don’t believe me, or something about what I’m saying pisses them off. Either way, I can’t talk there. So Moses gave me permission to write things down. So I will. Then I’ll get on with life. Somewhere.

Our people have rituals and ceremonies meant to bring us vision. I have never participated in any of them, but I have seen things. I have been lifted up and out of this physical world into a place where time and space have a different rhythm. I always remained within the borders of this world, yet I had the eyes of one born to a different plane. Our medicine people would call me a seer. But I was in the thrall of a power I never understood. It left me years ago, and the loss of that gift has been my greatest sorrow. Sometimes it feels as though I have spent my entire life on a trek to rediscover it.

Blue Magic from Tor.

Alyx Dellamonica is a Vancouver writer whose first novel, the apocalyptic fantasy INDIGO SPRINGS, was released in 2009 to rave reviews. Filled with sexual tension, unrequited love, messy ethical dilemmas and an ecologically unbalanced form of magic, the book tells the story of three friends who inadvertently cause the mystical equivalent of a nuclear meltdown in a small town in Oregon.

Dellamonica’s fiction began to appear in print in 1986, and despite repeated washings, remains in circulation in a variety of print and on-line locales. Her alternate history of Joan of Arc, “A Key to the Illuminated Heretic,” was short-listed for the 2005 Sidewise Award and in 2006 she was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts’ Grant for Emerging Artists for her novel THE WINTERGIRLS. She teaches writing through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.

In her spare time, she volunteers for the Out in Harmony Community Choir, gardens, and is an avid digital photographer. Her 1989 marriage to Chatelaine wine columnist Kelly Robson became legal in 2003.

“Being a writer is like being Spiderman. It may not always be easy–at times, it can be terribly hard. The highs are stratospheric, while the lows… occasionally, you even want to quit. But storytelling is a form of superpower; once it gets hold of a person, it will express itself one way or another. The trick is to find a way to tell your tales, to the best of your ability, while living a full and vibrant life.”

AUDIO INTERVIEW FILE TO GO HERE.