09.27.07
Booking Through Thursday’s question
This week, Booking Through Thursday has asked:
Buy a Friend a Book Week is October 1-7 (as well as the first weeks of January, April, and July). During this week, you’re encouraged to buy a friend a book for no good reason. Not for their birthday, not because it’s a holiday, not to cheer them up–just because it’s a book.
What book would you choose to give to a friend and why?
I’m going to turn this week’s question on its head and recommend a friend’s book instead… as it’s certainly something I would recommend to all my friends to read anyway, and have done so previously, now that I think of it. (Still being essentially a bookseller/sales rep at heart and through and through, I enjoy leading the cheer for any deserving friends whenever they succeed in achieving their goals.)
Darcie Hossack has a story, Ashes, included in the collection Half In The Sun: Anthology of Mennonite Writing, published by Ronsdale Press, Vancouver, in 2006. The book was edited by Elsie K. Neufeld and includes an introduction written by Sharon Butala. It’s available in most bookstores across Canada or through the various usual online sources.
I first “met” Darcie in cyberspace last year when we were enrolled in the Humber School of Creative Writing, online division, and she studied under the very effective mentor, Sandra Birdsell. As I recall, the first discussion board posts that got our friendship rolling had to do with food – an exchange of muffin/scone recipes, suitable for baking and eating to aid in the writing process. We soon discovered not only a common love of food, but a shared sense of humour, love of cats, an equal enjoyment of the written word and the craft of writing, and an ambition to one day have our work published in book form. Over the past year-and-a-half we have supported each other through rewrites, edits, hair-pulling agony when things didn’t work, excitement and congratulations when they did, writing contests, and publishers’ rejections. I’m very pleased to say that Darcie is the first of our Humber Alumni Email Support Group (17 members strong!) who has managed to grasp that golden ring we writers all strive to reach. I don’t know anyone who works harder than Darcie, continuing to write a weekly food column published in Kelowna, BC, where she lives (I have posted a couple of her columns on my blog), as well as preparing a collection of twelve short stories for future publication. (All fingers and toes crossed, Darcie!) Her blog is listed to the right in my Blogroll. I can’t think of anyone more deserving of success, which she will now surely achieve, with her chosen career.
So do yourselves a favour – discover a new, and rising talent. Buy Half In The Sun and enjoy Darcie’s story, as well as writing by other Canadian women. And stay tuned – I hope to be able to report more, and very soon, about the continuing, successful writing career of my good friend, Darcie Hossack!
By the way, Darcie and I have never had the opportunity to actually “meet” in person, living as we do so far away from each other, in our respective lush gardens of Eden - she in the Okanagan Valley, me on Bequia. We’re planning that our eventual meeting will be part of a book on which we hope to collaborate…
Heather (errantdreams) said,
September 27, 2007 at 9:15 am
What a great way to interpret the question.
Becca said,
September 27, 2007 at 9:48 am
Canadian writers have a style all their own - I’ve enjoyed reading them before. I will definitely check this out.
Thanks for the recommendation, and for sharing this story of your friendship!
gautami tripathy said,
September 27, 2007 at 10:23 am
You did well taking on the prompt this well. It made a very interesting read and I will add that to my TBR list!
--Deb said,
September 27, 2007 at 10:40 am
I think “Sell a Friend’s Book Week” sounds like a perfectly reasonable interpretation–good for you!
Stephanie said,
September 27, 2007 at 11:15 am
Sounds like a wonderful book!! I will have to check it out!
darcie friesen hossack said,
September 27, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Awww. Susan, thanks for this. “Half in the Sun” is a beautiful collection, every piece of fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction having been written by Mennonite writers living in British Columbia.
Carla Funk’s poem, “Bums,” about the heredity of plushness, adds literary lightness, balancing fiction about a Siberian internment camp.
“Ashes,” my own title, begins like this:
Libby would rather be in the garden. It’s almost warm enough this April, with teasings of green having arrived on the land to predict an early spring. She doesn’t need the signs of seasonal shift for her to feel a winter’s worth of longing – the desire to walk with bare feet through warm mud. Indeed, she imagines herself taking root alongside seeds harvested from last year’s best squash and melons. She will plant tomatoes as well, although she has sometimes been charged with giving them too much space in the garden, space that could otherwise be seeded with more sensible vegetables. Vegetables in straight rows with modest coverings of husks and pods and rinds. Or potatoes, ugly but underground.
Tomatoes make Anke nervous. The way they become vulnerable to every whim of weather at the first hint of ripening. The way their soft flesh yields to the slightest pressure, their gel-enveloped seeds. There was a time when she used to pick and eat them in the afternoon, when they were warm on the vine. Now she presses them into sterilized jars instead, tempers their sweetness with a boiling salt-and-vinegar brine.
Besides tomato red there are other colours Anke finds disturbing. Blue, like the scattered shards of cobalt pottery seeded through the back garden. And yellow. Tuscany yellow. The name of a paint she’d once chosen for one of the bedrooms.
Unlike Libby, Anke is a sure voice for practicality. But, since Matthew went and married Libby anyway, Anke won’t say a word to him about it now. Tell him that girls like Libby inevitably come to grief. That their careless, barefoot-in-the-spring ways, their enthusiasm, undoes them. And Anke’s not willing to explain how she knows this…
http://www.ronsdalepress.com/catalogue/halfsun.html
Jos said,
September 27, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Have you read the latest book of Philip Roth: Exit ghost???? any comments
islandeditions said,
September 27, 2007 at 7:03 pm
En francais? Non, Monsieur. Not even in English, Jos. Have you read it? If so, how about writing a review. Or, better yet, why not tell us about those wonderful Parisian restaurants, wine and food you are currently enjoying. You could write be a guest blogger!
BookGal said,
September 28, 2007 at 12:58 am
What a great idea! I have a number of writer friends. I wonder why I haven’t gifted their books more.