Mimi Power and Magnifico: an author's blog

Let me set this up for you. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck does not mean you don’t give a f*ck about anything (what would be the point of that?), it means you have to choose what to give a f*ck about. “The point,” says author Mark Manson, isn’t to get away from all the sh*t. The point is to find the sh*t that you enjoy dealing with.” Think of Manson as that foul-mouthed friend who tells you to get your sh*t together, by telling you to get your sh*t together. Literally. The logic behind this "counterintuitive approach to living a good life"  is an endless series of decisions as to “which problem is better.” Choosing well, based on your values, is a kind of trading up of problems, where deciding what to care about, and taking action, high-grades your situation for the better. Problems in life are inevitable, but your quality of life, says Manson, “is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.” That means losing the sense of entitlement, and taking re...

As the “Amazing Grace” sets sail for a voyage to the South Seas, Torre DeRoche looks down and contemplates one of her toenails. It bears a remnant fleck of nail polish, a last shred of her former life as a two-feet-firmly-on-terra-firma graphic artist from Australia about to embark upon a life at sea. Until this point, DeRoche’s greatest adventure has been to leave her big, boisterous family in Australia for what was meant to be a three hour tour—whoops-year—in San Francisco. But when Torre meets Ivan, an Argentinean IT project manager with an unwavering dream of sailing the South Pacific, her best laid plans go through the proverbial porthole. Soon enough, DeRoche takes the plunge, with anxiety, humour and a darn-good putty-knife. Some days are better than others en route to French Polynesia. Postcard sunsets and unspoiled tropical islands are interspersed by knocking about in squalls, seasickness so severe it has Torre bunk-ridden for days or bailing a bilge that fills fas...

“Look, only a few people get to die peacefully in their sleep after a wonderful life. So that’s like not making the football team. There’s lots of things you don’t get to have. That’s probably one of them. Thank God, I consider myself lucky that I live after anesthetic. Can you imagine those days? ‘Sit down. Tuesday, we’re taking off your arm.’” --Albert Brooks in Judd Apatow's Sick in the Head Let’s be smart about this. You could spend the next year reading through the bestseller list on anger management, business, collaboration, creativity, living for the moment, marriage, mentorship, parenting, perseverance, rejection, self-help and the spiritual feeling that comes from writing. Or, you could find all that and more in Judd Apatow’s Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy . First released in 2015, this collection of conversations had its origins in the early 80s, when 15-year-old Apatow, a self-described “comedy geek”,  was interviewing up-and-coming c...

“Look, only a few people get to die peacefully in their sleep after a wonderful life. So that’s like not making the football team. There’s lots of things you don’t get to have. That’s probably one of them. Thank God, I consider myself lucky that I live after anesthetic. Can you imagine those days? ‘Sit down. Tuesday, we’re taking off your arm.’” --Albert Brooks in Judd Apatow's Sick in the Head Let’s be smart about this. You could spend the next year reading through the bestseller list on anger management, business, collaboration, creativity, living for the moment, marriage, mentorship, parenting, perseverance, rejection, self-help and the spiritual feeling that comes from writing. Or, you could find all that and more in Judd Apatow’s Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy . First released in 2015, this collection of conversations had its origins in the early 80s, when 15-year-old Apatow, a self-described “comedy geek”,  was interviewing up-and-coming co...

"I have the American dream — I had a dream of becoming a writer! I was little — not rich, or not anything really, but I did have this hope and faith and it kind of has come true for me. So I wouldn't say the American dream is all hokum. Not in my case, at least." —John Updike* “Writer’s and Company” recently aired a n encore presentation of Eleanor Wachtel’s 1996 interview with John Updike . Feeling remiss in never having read even one of Updike’s 60 books — two of them Pulitzer Prize-winners — I went in search of Rabbit, Run . I found Terrorist instead. Inside 18-year-old Ahmad Ashmawy Mully, something terrible is churning. On the surface, he is a high school senior. A solid student. He runs track every spring. And wears a crisp, white, buttoned up shirt every day that does nothing to conceal the contempt he feels for his classmates at Central High School in New Prospect, New Jersey. Through the lens of detachment, Ahmad observes—and is offended at...

“‘When my great-grandparents die, one right after the other, I’m little and can’t figure it out. Where did people go? ‘How can they just disappear?’ I asked my mother. ‘They don’t,’ she said. ‘They’re in you. Every generation that precedes you. Sometimes in ways you don’t even know. It could be anything, darling. A turn of phrase. Not liking nutmeg. People don’t disappear.   Look how you hold your pinky.’ I looked down. ‘It’s just like Poppy!’ ‘Exactly.’”   —from Shocked: My Mother, Schiaparelli, and Me by Patricia Volk Once upon a time in Manhattan, a daughter is born to an “outrageously” beautiful mother. When she is 10 years old, the daughter, Patricia Volk, discovers a book so compelling she feigns a sore throat to stay home from school and finish reading it. But really, there is no rush. She will come back to it, time and again, to understand that it is possible to be someone other than the ideal of Audrey, her beloved, complex and beautiful mo...

“‘Follow me,’ he said and I trailed him down the main hallway, past a row of dark offices. As on the day before I longed to linger over the books lining the walls. My eye caught some thrillingly familiar names, like Pearl Buck and Langston Hughes, and some intriguingly foreign ones, like Ngaio Marsh, and my stomach began to flutter in the way it had on childhood trips to our local library: so many books, each enticing in its own specific way, and all mine for the taking. ‘Wow,’ I said, almost involuntarily. James stopped and turned. “I know,” he said with a real smile. ‘I’ve been here six years and I still feel that way.’  —from My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff Everywhere else in the world, it is 1996. But in “The Agency”, a pseudonym for New York’s “oldest and most storied” literary agency, at least a couple of decades seem to have gone by unnoticed. Books line wood-panelled walls, reading lamps spotlight desktops (the flat, wooden kind upon which you put stuff othe...

Merry Christmas everyone! My gift to you and your family is A Power Christmas Special (6-10 year-olds especially), illustrated by Marc Mongeau--where Mimi and her family find all the chaos the season has to offer. Broken gingerbread, the TV log fireplace, a Wise Man behind the wheel, elves with their own trading cards and a very hungry Santa Claus... It's free to download from the iBooks store right here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/a-power-christmas-special/id940288695?mt=11 If you don't have an iPad, you can link to the PDF version from here.  Go ahead, give it a try! I hope you enjoy it. It was fun to write. I think I figured out about half the story standing in a two-hour line-up to get a balloon poodle made at a Santa's Breakfast two years ago. Anyway, you can let me know what you think anytime at victorianunuk "at" telus "dot" net or on twitter @victorianunuk Merry Christmas, and remember, "It's not what Santa can...

If you've ever wondered why "Native people just can't get over it" or what the fuss is about faux headdresses at folk festivals, well, allow Darrell Dennis to explain. Dennis is an original--and not just in the First Nations sense of the word. An actor, comedian, playwright, screenwriter, radio host, and member of the Shushwap Nation in British Columbia, Dennis is also the author of Peace Pipe Dreams: The Truth About Lies About Indians (Douglas & McIntyre, 2014). In busting through the myths and misconceptions surrounding First Nations people, Dennis leaves no stone unturned. Sports mascots, substance abuse statistics, the Christopher Columbus narrative, movies featuring the noble savage ("Always-Helps-The-White-Man"); movies featuring the nasty savage (think eat-your-heart-out Magua from "The Last of the Mohicans") are all ripe for a rethink. Then there's Canada as the ultimate "deadbeat dad" when it comes to honouring...

Friday, September 4, 2015 Stage and screen star, SCTV alumnus and Tony/Gemini/Emmy-winning actress, comedienne and now memoirist Andrea Martin has a few confessions to make. She hasn’t read The Goldfinch (she’s a little off books these days) she’d rather chat with telemarketers than write, and every two months she flies to Atlanta to get her hair done. She knits, likes using the F word, is pretty sure that she wasn’t a perfect mother, hates being called perky and nothing, but nothing, makes her laugh like a rumba-dancing dog in a pink tuxedo. Oh, and one more thing. Brace yourself. She. Is. Not. Canadian. She’s not Greek, either. And she’s not even a little bit Jewish (she’s just “good at it”). But take a few deep yoga breaths and let it go. Because it’s hard to be mad at “Canada’s favourite illegitimate child” for even a sentence or two of Andrea Martin’s Lady Parts . And why would you even want to be? After all, she’s been making us laugh for over 40 years. We practica...

In the digital age, could success be just a tweet or two away? Probably not. Take it from Aliza Licht, senior vice president of global communications at Donna Karan International, a clear career path, perseverance, and passion matter as much as they ever did. It’s just that how to make (or break) a career online (“killing it” works both ways) is now an essential part of understanding the wired world of work. Licht has plenty to draw upon in Leave Your Mark: Land Your Dream Job. Kill it in Your Career. Rock Social Media. It took a detour out of med school and into fashion, first as a magazine intern and eventually up to the executive suite, for Licht to find her own brand within a brand and build a following more than half-a-million strong. The author and creator of DKNY PR GIRL® knows from experience that no matter how sharp and snappy your tweets, it’s sustaining a start-up spirit that counts more. Going above and beyond (think spending your unpaid weekends sorting shoe inve...

“My elementary school was Lord Roberts in the west end of Vancouver. Its library was the place where I felt most like me.” —from the Foreword by Sarah Ellis in  The Library Book: A History of Service to British Columbia 150 years of anything would probably make a good book—so long as the research and writing are up to snuff. In 2011, the British Columbia Library Association marked its centennial, fittingly, with a book dedicated to the development of libraries over the past one-and-a-half centuries. Journalist and author Dave Obee was awarded the task, and the result is a visually engaging history appealing to anyone with a love of libraries and history. Explorers as far back as Simon Fraser brought books with them on their journeys, to stock the lending libraries of the Northwest Trading Company. British Columbia’s early libraries were established in saloons, hotels, news agents, in private collections, company reading rooms and a shelf or two of shop space. ...

“You go somewhere when you’re on the ice,”  Virgil said to me after one practice.  “It’s like watching you walk into a secret place  that no one else knows how to get to.” Hockey is the saving grace of young Saul Indian Horse’s life. Lost to his family and orphaned in his grandmother’s arms, eight-year-old Saul is discovered at an icy railroad stop in northern Ontario and stolen away to spend the next six years at St. Jerome’s Indian Residential School. “St. Jerome’s took all the light from my world,” Saul remembers. He saw children die of abuse or suicide, with whatever they had to take themselves away from hell on earth: a pitchfork; rocks to weigh down a dress in water; rope to swing from the rafters of a barn. Anything, even death, was better than the despair of suffering the school’s daily humiliations. It is a hockey ice rink, built at St. Jerome’s during Saul’s second winter, that saves him. In the years that follow, the crack of light o...

February 11, 2015 In his 1986 autobiography Is that it? Bob Geldof, the Irish rock musician and humanitarian, quotes Mother Theresa on giving. “When you give, give generously and without conditions,” said the Albanian nun known for her lifelong devotion to the poorest of the poor. But in organizational dynamics, it’s not that simple—an individual may be a giver, a matcher or a taker or a complex combination of the three. Their dominant tendency will not only shape their career, and the satisfaction they draw from it, it can also create a ripple effect throughout the organizations and the communities they serve. The giving that The Wharton School's Adam Grant studies is not primarily of the charitable kind, but it is no less generous. Grant’s givers may or may not be writing cheques to worthy causes, but they share a common aptitude and interest in supporting the well-being and fulfillment of others. In Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success , Grant descri...

November 11, 2014 “And you’d thank everyone for coming. We all raise a glass to Maya. Everyone goes home happy.” “So it’s basically a book party.” “Yeah, sure.”  Lambiase has never been to a book party. “I hate book parties,” A.J. says.  “But you run a bookstore,” Lambiase says. “It’s a problem,” A.J. admits. — from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin Book parties aren’t the only thing A.J. Fikry hates. He is not fond of book blurbs, summer people, ghostwriters, children’s books (or children, for that matter), celebrity picturebooks, “…’postmodernisms, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism … and… this goes without saying, vampires’”. He does not like how much he drinks (that is, too much), or the frozen Vindaloo entrees and the loneliness that accompany them. And since his wife died, he has hated the work of being what he is, a bookseller on a small New England island. Despite his closely held list of pr...

"Solitary people, these book lovers.  I think it's swell that there are people you don't have to worry about  when you don't see them for a long time,  you don't have to wonder what they do, how they're getting along with themselves.  You just know that they're all right, and probably doing something they like."  -- from Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi Writer St. John Fox has a penchant for killing his heroines and the women in his life don't like it, not one bit. Nor are they terribly keen on each other. So it is that Mr. Fox's wife, Daphne, and his muse, Mary, each vie for his attention and affections while trying to avoid the inevitable losses that come with love. To Oyeyemi's great credit, their insightful discoveries touch upon habits, idiosyncrasies and dilemnas of all who seek love and understanding from those we care for the most. "The girl tried, several times, to give her love away, but her love would not...

"But wouldn't you want to live anyway?"  I asked, astonished by his vehemence.  "Don't you want to live for yourself?"  So asks 22-year-old Grace Winter of Mr. Preston, who sits beside her in an overcrowded lifeboat after the Princess Alexandra sinks in the Atlantic Ocean. It is 1914 and Grace finds herself, suddenly, both newlywed and widow, adrift and waiting for rescue in Charlotte Rogan's The Lifeboat . But when the hardtack is gone and the drinking water run dry, the days wear on with neither land nor salvation in sight. A strange and mysterious separation emerges between passengers with the will to live and lead, at any price, and those made weak--or noble--by their circumstances. This  menacing rift swells and dangerously divides the passengers from "the only person among us who knew anything about boats and currents and the boiling sea."  A tension of opposing forces builds to one of the few decisive acts tha...

June 22, 2014 Think of it, Margaret… Dark skin, a country upbringing-- you would be a curiosity on a visit, but beyond that,  you would never be accepted. -- from The Chief Factor's Daughter  by Vanessa Winn, Touchwood Editions , c. 2009 As Margaret Work fears herself rapidly approaching spinsterhood, her hopes for marriage and full acceptance into society begin to fade. Her Irish-Metis heritage is a source of insecurity she cannot overcome, despite a respectable social standing established by John Work, the family patriarch, as Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company outpost in Fort Victoria.  "A courtship with her, she was painfully aware, would be a one-way passage for Mr. _____.  To marry her would also mean marrying the colony. She was born to the country, and to take her back to the Old World would be nearly unthinkable." Even in her admirers, Margaret detects a disconcerting tendency to scrutinize her features and suspects they...

May 26, 2014 If they could have seen their futures from childhood, Melanie Kupchinsky and Joanne Lipman might well have wondered how they might bear the worst of what fate had in store. Melanie, the daughter of two musical parents, would know tragedy from an early age. Her mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis before Melanie, the eldest of two girls, was five. Virtually housebound, Jean Kupchynsky was unable to attend her daughters’ music recitals and performances, and was often hospitalized for long periods of time. Years later, the mysterious disappearance of Melanie’s sister, Stephanie, at the age of 27, left a void in the small and already splintered family. It would be seven long years of not knowing before Stephanie’s fate was resolved, confirming a tragic end to a talented young life. Joanne would one day flee the basement of the World Trade Centre and watch the towers collapse from a few blocks away. Later, as a working mother, treatment for breast cancer wo...

May 1, 2014 Congratulations to Jhumpa Lahiri and all the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction 2014 finalists! "After she became a mother she told Subhash it made her love him more, knowing what he'd done."--from "The Lowland" by Jhumpa Lahiri — Victoria Miles (@victorianunuk) February 15, 2014