101 Letters to a Prime Minister Read Online Free PDF Page B

was an even more dedicated reader. His library was so extensive that King had it shipped out when he moved in, needing space for his own collection. Laurier’s books are now stored at the National Archives.

    A part of King’s library
.
    How did they manage to read so much? Perhaps Laurier and King were excellent at time management. Certainly television wasn’t there to inform them in part and otherwise fruitlessly devour their hours. Or was it that reading was a natural and essential element of being a respectable, well-rounded gentleman? Was it some ingrained habit of the privileged that gave these two prime ministers permission to spend so much time reading?
    Reading was perhaps a privileged activity then. But not now. In a wealthy, egalitarian country like ours, where the literacy rate is high (although some people still struggle and need our help) and public libraries are just that, public, reading is no longer an elite pastime. A good book today has no class, so to speak, and it can be had by anyone. One of the marvels of where I live, the beautiful province of Saskatchewan, is that the smallest town—Hazlet, for example, population 126—has a public library. Nor need books be expensive, if you want to own one. You can get a gold mine of a used book for fifty cents. After that, all that is needed to appreciate the investment is a little pocket of time.

    And King was a musician, too
.
    I bet you King hurried to bed muttering to himself, “It was Parker the butler, I’m sure of it!”
    Yours truly,
    Yann Martel
    D AME A GATHA C HRISTIE 1890–1977, the award-winning British author referred to by some as “the Queen of Crime,” is one of the bestselling authors of all time. She is known the world over for her detective novels and created two of the most iconic detectives in crime-writing history: Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She worked as a nurse in World War I, acquiring a knowledge of poisons and illnesses that would later serve her well when writing murder mysteries. In addition to writing more than eighty novels, she wrote several plays, short stories and romances. Many of her stories have been adapted for the screen.

BOOK 4:

BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION
I SAT DOWN AND WEPT
BY ELIZABETH SMART
May
28, 2007
    To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel
    Dear Mr. Harper,
    And now a book to be read aloud. I believe that’s the best way to read Elizabeth Smart’s
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
. Because this is a language book, a book where language is the plot, the character and the setting. There is something else, of course, the theme, and the theme here is an old eternal one: love.
    So what a perfect book to read in bed at the end of the day and aloud. A book to be shared.
    The links between art and life can be reductionist, but this might help you stay afloat in the wash of language: one day Elizabeth Smart read some poems in a bookshop and she fell in love—I’m tempted to say “decided to fall in love”—with the poet, who was George Barker. Good thing for George Barker, because I suspect George Barker will be remembered by posterity more for being “the poet Elizabeth Smart fell in love with” than for his poetry. Smart and George Barker eventually met, in California, and they became lovers and her essentialbliss and hell began. Because George Barker was married and would have durable relations with more women than just his wife and Elizabeth Smart. The great number of children he fathered—fifteen in all, including four with Smart—might indicate that he took the consequences of love as seriously as its emotional premise, but I doubt his fathering skills were that good. I am digressing. Elizabeth Smart fell in love with George Barker, it was killing for her heart but it yielded this jewel of a book. In a way, Smart was another Dante and
By Grand Central Station
is another
Divine Comedy
, only the direction of travel is