Reviews, Ottawa Poetry Hall of Honour and a Book Club

Photo by Alejandro Bustos

Ottawa has numerous blogging bookworms.  As an avid bibliophile myself, I intend to highlight on a regular basis local blogs with a literary bent.  On that note, Emilie's Book World reviews Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys, a novel for young adults that was released earlier this month.  The novel tells the story of 17-year-old Josie Moraine, the daughter of a local prostitute.  Planning on leaving New Orleans, she ends up getting involved in an investigation following a mysterious death. The book description and review got me intrigued, so I will put this on my reading list.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, local wordsmith Amanda Earl dreams of a regular fiction series in Ottawa, while Ciara from Lost at Midnight Reviews announces plans for a book club focussed on young adult fiction.  The Ottawa Poetry Newsletter, meanwhile, notes that VERSeOttawa is creating a Hall of Honour to celebrate those people who have made an important contribution to the city's poetry scene.  The inaugural induction will take place on March 17th as part of VERSeFest.  Elsewhere in the newsletter are reviews on The Art of Plumbing by Brecken Hancock, a history on the conception and evolution of the bathtub, and the poetry book A Note on the Text by Seth Landman.

Finally, local poet Rob Mclennan interviews Anne Fleming, writer of the collection of short stories, Gay Dwarves of America.  According to Fleming's web site, "There are no gay dwarves in Gay Dwarves of America, but there’s a mother of a teen with dwarfism who worries he might be gay, and there’s a parasitologist named Edna who’d rather not hear the words ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ but longs for the love of a certain young woman, and a boy on a unicycle — there is always a boy on a unicycle — and a hockey mom in Toronto who pretends to be Swiss."