J. J. Lee is the author of The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the 2012 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction, and the 2011 BC Book Prizes Hubert Evans Prize for Non-Fiction.

Below is J. J. Lee's Lit Wish List: Five Books to Mull Over by the Fire: "Upon a Winter Midnight Dreary when the wind pushes against the windows, these are the books I would like to mull over by the fire. My choices are not flashy or dashy, but each book indeed carries deep hot embers that appeal to a philosophic and reflective frame of mind without risk of putting the reader to sleep."

The Golden Mean
Annabel Lyon
Random House, 2010

While I never earned a PhD in Classical Philosophy as Ms. Lyon does (I studied Classics at McGill for one year, Latin nearly did me in, and Ancient Greek made me drop out), I do maintain a great interest in the Hellenistic world. Lyon's choice to explore the relationship between Alexander the Great and his teacher, Aristotle, makes for a novel of intelligence and passion. Lyon treats the reader to two giants of antiquity as they struggle with what it means to be a good man and a good king, and gives their grand historic legacy a human voice while grounding a philosophic meditation in the drama of family life. How one treats a brother, a mother, a friend or a father, Lyon suggests, provides insight into how one will treat an empire.

Inspecting the Vaults with The Paradise Motel
Eric P. McCormack
Penguin, 1993
(Inspecting the Vaults, 1987; The Paradise Motel, 1989)

McCormack is best known for his 1997 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction shortlisted novel, First Blast Of The Trumpet Against The Monstrous Regiment Of Women, but I really enjoy his earlier work. Extremely hard to find, it’s worth the hunt. McCormack’s stories offer sublime, uncanny horrors with images that can last a lifetime. In Inspecting the Vaults, there’s “The Swath.” It tracks a paranormal fissure that slices through the earth. It haunts me. The ravening maw can’t be forgotten. If you find a rare hardcover copy of Inspecting (or McCormack’s The Mysterium) send it to me. It will get me in the Christmas spirit.

Never Cry Wolf
Farley Mowat
McClelland & Stewart, 1963

My son, Jack, recently started reading Never Cry Wolf. It was most probably the first book I read that elicited my empathy for another species. A classic of Canadiana and an important work in the literature animal conservation. However, the title has come upon hard times. Once accepted as a work of non-fiction, Never Cry Wolf has been in recent decades castigated for inaccurate descriptions of wolf behaviour and fabrication. Should we await for the expert deconstruction of Walt Morey’s Gentle Ben? Pfff. Mowat’s journey from his grandmother’s house in Oakville, Ontario to a wolf’s den in “the Barren Lands of central Keewatin,” is a paean to the grandeur of the North and a view of nature that goes beyond “statistical and analytical research, whereby the raw material of life became no more than fodder for the nourishment of calculating machines.” To wit, I’ve offered to Jack to form a Never Cry Wolf book club for two.

What’s Bred in the Bone
Robertson Davies
Penguin Canada, 1997
(originally published by Macmillan, 1985)

Part of The Cornish Trilogy, What's Bred in the Bone was shortlisted for a Booker Prize. The edition I like best has an illustrated cover that resembles a Tarot card. I read the book when I studied painting at Concordia. I was also secretly enroled in Latin at McGill. Overworked and dizzied with new ideas, I felt quite miserable at the time. But when the flurries came and I had to scurry from one campus to another, I could imagine I was Francis Cornish, the novel’s protagonist. He was a man out of step with his time, who kept many of his age’s secrets. Oxford, plundering Nazis, art forgeries, MI-5, and falling in love with your cousin. A gothic masterpiece.

One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver
Witold Rybczynski
Simon & Schuster, 2001

An absolutely delightful history of the tool and its little buddy, the screw.

Rybczynski gives a compelling history of the long line brilliant tinkerers and engineers who developed the screwdriver to make it one of the great inventions of a millenium.

And at its developmental apogee, the Robertson, a Canadian innovation.

Perfect for the handy man or woman in your life.

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J. J. Lee was born in 1969 in Montreal and grew up primarily on the city’s South Shore. He studied fine arts at Concordia University and holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of British Columbia.

He is the author of The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, the 2012 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction,

and the 2011 BC Book Prizes Hubert Evans Prize for Non-Fiction.

His fashion and personal essays appear in ELLE Canada and he contributes a monthly menswear advice column for The Vancouver Sun as well as occasional columns for CBC Radio in Vancouver.

He has worked in broadcasting as a writer, contributor, comedy performer, reporter, and producer for such CBC Radio programs as Basic Black, Out Front, The Current, Richardson’s Roundup, Sounds Like Canada, and Ideas, for which he prepared a radio documentary on the social history of suits that inspired The Measure of a Man. 

JJ Lee lives in New Westminster, British Columbia.

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