And not just any bibliophile either. Teacher, poet, bigtime Habs fan and long-time friend Darren Bifford.
We spent a day out and about in London, our book shopping paced with pint sipping. He bought some poetry books. As poets do. I bought a standout selection of electic erudition.
CTRL.ALT.SHIFT. Unmasks Corruption. The Lazarides Gallery caught my eye as we walked up Greek Street. An awesome exhibition of comic arts dedicated to sticking it to the Man. “An entertaining informative and accesible introduction to one of the greatest impediments to development and justice worldwide – corruption.” Joe Sacco
London: A Short History. A.N. Wilson I’m working my way up to a longer history.
But frankly, I’ve got a lot of reading on the go already. Give it to me straight, and give it to me quick.
The Pitch: The essential guide to selling stories. Eileen Quinn and Judy Counihan. When I’ve got stories, I’ll need to sell them. This was described as a ‘demystifying canter through the pitch process’. There is no better type of canter.
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge. John O’Farrell. This book is thick. Not flyswatter thick, more like ratcrushing thick. But from the subtitle to the introduction, it’s clear that though this is a long history, it’s far from dry. Rather, it’s peppered with topical references and jokes. That’s how you get people like me to pay attention.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. David Foster Wallace. A lunchtime pub conversation about DFW led to my admission I’d never read any of his work. Darren suggested we quest to find this particular collection of essays. It wasn’t hard. But it was important. besides being a mission accomplished, Darren said it would inform my craft.
The next day I was working on some corporate writing stuff for a cell phone provider and coined the tagline ‘Infinite Texts’. It was for a phone company ad for an unlimited text messaging option. You can be sure that was directly pulled from the title of his massive novel Infinite Jest. I know right? Awesome. That’s what we call an auspicious beginning to my freelance corporate writing carer, and my relationship with DFW. If you prefer, we could call it a ‘demystifying canter’.
