Margaret Atwood was on campus on Wednesday as part of the University's
Distinguished Speakers Series.
I went to hear her speak and I have to say that it really wasn't what I expected. Atwood herself was funnier than I imagined. Her talk was on the short side and its topic was "questions people have asked me and their answers" so the whole program ended up being like one huge question-and-answer session.
What she chose to include in her talk was interesting, particularly her discussion of how the questions she's usually asked have changed over the years. She touched on her hair, feminism, speculative fiction, and hope. Her answer to the question of which of her characters is most like her is Zenia from
The Robber Bride because she's a pathological liar who's able to spin tales appropriate to her audience.
The audience questions covered a variety of topics. Atwood was asked about her arctic vacations and whether she had any advice for graduate students. Individuals requested that she comment about one character or another and share her feelings about the
film adaptation of
The Handmaid's Tale (she wishes they'd release an original cut because the voice-over bits were cut out and, while she understood that they had to change the ending, she didn't think what they decided to do was logical).
When Atwood was asked which genre she prefers to write she answered that if she really and truly enjoyed one more than the others that'd be the only genre in which she'd write. She continued that the bit of writing that she finds most difficult is the book review. As a result she reviews infrequently and only books that she likes. She mentioned reviewing
E.O. Wilson's first novel
Anthill.
She was also asked which authors she always snaps up:
Alice Munro and
Hilary Mantel. She also threw in a plug for Yann Martel's new book,
Beatrice and Virgil (forthcoming in April).
When asked about the impending death of the book (in the wake of e-readers), Atwood mentioned that she'd written
a post on
her blog detailing three reasons to keep paper books: solar storms, energy shortages, and internet overload.
Books that were mentioned in the program (ordered, more or less, from most-mentioned to least) were
The Handmaid's Tale,
The Year of the Flood (which we'd expected her to talk more about than she did),
Oryx and Crake,
The Robber Bride, and
Alias Grace. Atwood mentioned her poetry, but generally.
Of course I can't mention everything here, but that was a taste of it.
When Imogene, her mother, and her brother move to Newford, she decides to reinvent herself — this time she won't go looking for trouble.
Academic Rebecca Moray receives a grant to do study both the history of Aran sweaters and the techniques and stories behind them. Her best friend Sharon grew up on the island* and Rebecca has been dreaming of this research trip for years. She also hopes that three months away will help ground her 6-year-old daughter Rowan, whose childhood has been marred by the loss of her father and frequent moves made necessary by Rebecca's career.
Russell likes Exodus because its plot is compelling (particularly with the inclusion of the various characters' backstories) and it's pretty accurate. He also appreciates the fact that Uris covers some parts of the history that are usually completely overlooked (like the evacuation of all the Yemeni Jews). When he first read the novel, it compelled him to do research on his own to find out what actually happened.
I was really pleased when I was offered an advanced reader copy of Ali Shaw's debut novel. I was intrigued by the synopsis. It seemed like just the kind of book I enjoy most. 
The convict ship Lady Julia set sail from England in 1789. Its cargo was a bevy of “disorderly girls”, unemployed women reduced to petty thievery or prostitution, who had been sentenced to “Transportation to Parts Beyond the Seas.” These women were destined for Sydney Cove in New South Wales to provide companionship and children for the many male convicts already peopling the area.
This debut novel, which was nominated for the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, reveals a strong voice that's simultaneously biting and accessible. 
Hollywood, California: three gruesome deaths within two weeks and every one of them a major star - an Oscar winner, an ingenue, and an action hero. A serial killer is working through the Hollywood A-list and celebrities are running scared.
The Historian, Kostova's debut novel, was published to much acclaim in 2005. The novel is full of archival research (what I mean here is that the characters spend lots of time in archives, not that Kostova did archival research for the novel though maybe she did) so it's been on my must-read list. It's just taken me years to get around to it.
Buried in info? Cross-eyed over technology? From the bottom of a pile of paper and discs, books, e-books, and scattered thumb drives comes a cry of hope: Make way for the librarians They want to help. They're not selling a thing. And librarians know best how to beat a path through the googolplex sources of information available to us, writes Marilyn Johnson, whose previous book, The Dead Beat, breathed merry life into the obituary-writing profession.