Fiction meets Reality, Reality meets Fantasy

Two totally unrelated pieces for you today, but which I couldn't resist.

The first is for any of you who might've spent any time reading detective novels or comic books when you were younger: the headline of your dreams!

(Best line of the story:

“She’s a little girl, she was grabbed, he’s a man, we put two and two together,” said Det. Emerson Finn, describing why the suspect was designated a potential sex offender.

God forbid I suggest that this doesn't really seem like enough to call the man a potential sex offender, but the math, the metaphor, and the logic are all delightfully preposterous. And anyway ... Six fingers! Outstanding!)

The second is an absolutely hysterical piece in every respect.

Nalo Hopkinson blogs at CBC.ca about her involvement in this year's "Canada Reads" literature competition, and the post's got everything! Ms. Hopkinson declares that she has something called Adult Attention Deficit Disorder; she gives us a rollicking synopsis of her book Brown Girl in the Ring (which tells the story of Ti-Jeanne, a black, single mother struggling to survive in "a Toronto suffering the extreme end-results of extreme cutbacks"); and she revisits her experiences of Canada Reads events past.

It was difficult to find a favourite line from this as there are just so many good ones, but I thought the following particularly inspired:

In that first year, I know that some Canadians were dubious about turning the serious contemplation of serious lit-ur-rat-oor into literary Survivor and voting a book off the island every week, as though you could weigh and measure artistic excellence like potatoes in the market.

Oh baby! A Survivor analogy and a grocery metaphor all in one delicious little run-on sentence. But a sampling of the craft on offer at this year's Canada Reads!