Reading as Fast as I Can

On Friday morning I'll be hearing Joseph Boyden (along with David Bergen and Gail Jones), but I haven't finished reading Three Day Road. I don't know if he'll be talking about that book particularly, since he's got a newer one out; It's just when I hand him the book to sign, I don't want there to be a bookmark in it. That's a dead giveaway that you haven't finished the book. Whoops! Guess the cat's out of the bag now.

Luckily I am a transit rider and can read in a moving bus. Also, I am a perpetual insomniac, which frees up the time the rest of you are unconscious for catching up on your reading. I don't think I'd ever catch up on the New Yorker backlog if it weren't for my bouts of insomnia. That buzzing noise that woke you up last night was my energy field revved up and reading.

If you don't know Three Day Road, and I say this with complete certainty even though I haven't finished the book, it is actually a Canadian masterpiece. I have no doubt that it will shortly be a classic and will be required reading in universities and highschools, part of the Canadian canon and an essential tool in the national conversation. It is an astonishing first novel (although Boyden has been writing short stories for a while) and I have started a list of the friends on whom I will press it when I've finished--although I may have to buy a lending copy so as not to risk losing my soon-to-be-autographed personal copy. I literally missed my stop getting off the bus the other day because I was at this part where the two young Cree World War I soldiers are staking out this German position. There was something about the description--it was almost as if I could smell the trenches. Turns out I'm not the only one either: it won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Book Award and a host of other honours. If you want a preview of Friday, here's a clip of Boyden reading from the book.