Hard to believe we’re one month out from the Canadian release of Mercutio on August 18! (And I think it’s releasing in some other countries soon too; looks like Sept. 1 in Australia, for example.) I have some events planned here in Canada, mostly in September and October, and I’ll have a rundown of those in an upcoming newsletter. In the meantime, if you’re interested in the book, it’s incredibly helpful to request it from your local library, and/or pre-order it from a bookshop. The Canadian release will be simultaneous hardback and paperback, so you have your choice. (And of course ebook and the audiobook read by Maxim Reston).

Some of my favourite bookshops in Canada are Bakka Phoenix in Toronto, McNally Robinson in Winnipeg, Argo and Joie de Livres in Montreal, Mill Street Books in Almonte, Books on Beechwood, Perfect Books, Octopus Books, and Spaniel’s Tale in Ottawa. Many of them will ship, and if it’s not available for sale near you, Blackwell’s in the UK ships internationally.

I don’t often get the chance to just read a book for fun that isn’t for a blurb for another writer, or for research, or for an awards jury. (All of these are privileges, and I get to blurb some amazing books.) But I did read something for fun alone this month! I read Nick Harkaway’s Karla’s Choice, a spy novel about George Smiley, the character made famous by his father, John le Carré. It’s so well done. It manages to feel completely seamless within the world of the Circus while also feeling like a novel written in the 2020s. There are a lot of familiar characters in the book, which is a delight for an avid le Carré reader like me. It doesn’t feel like pastiche (which is so often done badly with succession series) but it doesn’t feel Other, either. I’ve read a little of Harkaway’s other books and they’re also good, but good in a different way.

All told, I was very impressed as a writer, and more importantly, I actually managed to forget I was a writer for a while and just read a book on a plane like a person. Just what I needed. There’s another Smiley book out this year, The Taper Man, and I’m looking forward to it.

The Death of Robin Hood is an example of one of my favourite kinds of medieval movie: one that draws from the breadth of stories that have come down to us from the past, rather than just running the same old amusement park ride over and over; one that borrows a little of the looseness of old storytelling styles; and one that treats the fantastic as an element of the world inhabited by its characters without worrying too much about it. These are things I do to some extent in some of my books, too; the fairy and travel portions of Mercutio draw on medieval stories such as Huon of Bordeaux, for example. Anyway, I loved it. Probably my favourite Hugh Jackman role ever. It has an amazing soundtrack. It is very much 13th century Logan, which I mean as praise. It is definitely violent and bleak, so fair warning about that.

Angine de Poitrine got very popular very quickly over the last several months, so you are probably in one of three categories:

1. You haven’t heard about them yet.

2. You are sick of hearing about them.

3. You are all in. (This is me.)

If you’re in category 1, the short version is Angine de Poitrine is an anonymous costumed math-rock duo that consists of a guitarist/bassist and a drummer. I find myself humming their infectious, microtonal, multi-time-signature looping jams all the time. I saw them live at midnight in a field at the Winnipeg Folk Festival last week, and it was so much fun. They’re very good (the precision of their collaboration! in those costumes! in the dark! in 40C heat!), incredibly fun to watch (the movements! the playfulness!) and just earnest and weird and wholesome. I cannot explain this statement but the fact they come from Saguenay is the least surprising thing about them. Anyway, their music is not to everyone’s taste, but it’s to the taste of a surprisingly large number of people, apparently, and it is cool to see their rapid success. I thought this interview summed it up well:

I hope you’re finding things that bring you joy this month too.