Toby: a man

By Todd Babiak.

Toby Ménard is a television presenter who has a tastefully decorated condo, drives a BMW, and has a beautiful girlfriend who is equally ambitious. His face gracing a billboard for his televised etiquette segment, Toby: a gentleman, Toby seems to be invincible until an on-air meltdown leaves him virtually unemployable. A chance meeting with a woman named Catherine results in unexpectedly parenting a 2 year old in addition to the indignity of living in his parents’ basement in the suburbs. Toby continues to wear well-made suits with real handkerchiefs throughout the chaos that envelops his formerly dignified and tidy life as his father’s behaviour becomes increasingly alarming and he finds himself in more and more situations where there doesn’t seem to be a proper thing to do.

Babiak creates a light picture of Montreal with this endearing, funny social satire whose tone reminds me of Alexander McCall Smith’s Scotland Street series.  Toby: a man manages to be light in a thoughtful way with plenty of detail to entertain the reader.

If you enjoy Toby: a man, you will likely also enjoy Babiak’s The Garneau Block.

Addicted to Plastic (dvd)

Directed by Ian Connacher.

As someone who has recently purchased a reusable plastic-wrap substitute made of cloth and bee’s wax, this documentary seemed like a must-see. Plastics both make our current lives possible and are inescapable. They are often used to make things tidy and manageable, but the consequences of our plastic habit are anything but. I was surprised to hear that they have been around for about 100 years. And they stay around: plastics, with a few exceptions, do not biodegrade and only break into smaller physical pieces.

The film starts with a look at a section of ocean near a great gyre (a water current that swirls downward like a drain, pulling things in with it). It was amazing to see the pristine longshots of the water compared with the endless amount of plastic waste the researchers pulled out of the water, and this was only representative of the surface. High plastics levels in the ocean are poisoning sea creatures as they ingest them either directly or through the prey they eat.

The film continues its exploration of how we have doomed ourselves on land as well, but, surprisingly, not in a way that is overly preachy or dark. We are shown people dedicated to cleaning this mess up, my favourite being those who talk about the potential to use the energy buried in landfills as we do with oil.

In a time when the zeitgeist is “green” and too often “being green” means putting your bottles in the right bin, this film does an effective job of giving us a big-picture view of plastics and their place in our lives that is realistic without being paralyzingly depressing.

The Chosen One

By Carol Lynch Williams, 2009.

“My sins.

A plan. Books. And a boy.”

I picked this one up because it looked like it would read well on the plane and looked a bit creepy. More adults should read the odd YA novel: they’re not too long and many have compelling stories with broad age appeal. They are often suitable for ELL readers as well.

The Merchant of Venice (graphic novel)

By Gareth Hinds, based on the play by William Shakespeare, 2008.

As someone who took several Shakespeare courses in my undergrad and has volunteered for a few years at Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach theater, I approached this version of Merchant of Venice with an edge of skepticism. How could a graphic novel, while a worthy medium for many stories, capture the complexity of theme and language of the original? How could it not pale in comparison? I also questioned why it was created (likely, I thought, to tempt teens to like Shakespeare by transparently pandering to a format perceived as irresistible to them).

Dear Zachary: a letter to his son about his father

Created by Kurt Kuenne, 2008.

I watch a lot of documentaries. Not all of them are well made but I normally learn something anyway. Dear Zachary never feels like one of those “well, it was at least educational” films and even managed to stop my incessant channel surfing one night –it is an amazing portrayal of a very compelling story and possibly the best documentary I’ve seen. The film follows from Andrew Bagby’s murder by his girlfriend, to her pregnancy and the birth of baby Zachary, through the maddening process of two countries’ justice systems, and then to grandparents who move themselves to Newfoundland to be near their grandchild and their son’s murderer.  Along with sorrow and outrage for the people whose lives were devastated by Shirley Turner and inadequate justice procedure,  I was left with a profound feeling of respect for the Bagbys and their dedication to their grandson and their son’s memory.
I won’t be forgetting this one.

Official site for Dear Zachary (includes information about their fight for bail reform)

Sprout

*or, My salad days when I was green in judgment.

By Dale Peck, 2009.

Sprout Bradford has secrets, and not that he’s gay either. (Isn’t it nice when that’s not the big secret that drives the entire narrative?) He’ll admit that his mom is dead, that his dad’s an alcoholic, and that his alcoholic writing coach/teacher is dating his alcoholic dad.

Generation A

By Douglas Coupland, 2009.

“Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favours when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Syracuse University commencement address, May8, 1994

Skim

Written by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki, 2008.

Skim and her friend Lisa are working on becoming witches when a classmate’s boyfriend dumps her and then commits suicide. The GCL (Girls Celebrate Life!) Club is formed in response and begins a vapidly tyrannical reign over how the school should feel and behave in the wake of the event, paying particular attention to Skim who is falling into a deepening depression. (In a class “self-love” exercise, one girl writes that unhappiness makes her sad, while Skim writes that ignorance makes her sad. Agreed!) 

Explore

By Christy Goerzen, 2009.

To avoid going to juvenile detention for his part in a break in, Mike Longridge has to spend 10 months outside with a group of Granolas in Gore-Tex and polar fleece as part of the Explore program. (Granolas are a type of person who are outdoorsy and generally wholesome, and tend to eat organic foods including granola. Many examples are found in BC.)

Tales from Outer Suburbia

By Shaun Tan, 2008.

This is a book whose shadow lingers after you close it and you are glad that it does.