Robert Adams has a great gig. The 72-year-old Montreal resident has spent the last 25 years getting paid to talk about his favourite books, and just recently returned from a 3-1/2-month world cruise doing just that.
“Yeah, it’s not bad,” the former English teacher admits.
Adams returns to Hart House at the University of Toronto on June 22 and 23, where he will review Mr. Pip, by Lloyd Jones, a 2007 Man Booker-nominated book.
“It’s 90 minutes long,” Adams says of what can best be described as a performance. “I do a short précis of the book, act out bits of it, talk about its history and geography and talk about what the author is trying to do.” People have described him coming off stage with his shirt drenched in sweat from the effort he puts in.
It all began about 25 years ago when he was approached by a friend to speak at an ORT fundraiser. At first, he wasn’t sure what he would talk about but finally decided to review a book he had just finished reading, Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant.
The reading was a success and he was asked to do more. “Soon I was doing 40 to 50 reviews a year.”
Adams lectured to sold-out audiences for 11 years, both in Montreal and Toronto. His lectures were broadcast on TV Ontario and still air on Book TV. He has published two compilations of his lectures, one of which, A Love of Reading, was a bestseller. He decided to retire from this about four years ago because he was exhausted.
“But my wife [Pearl, who also acts as his manager and publicist] doesn’t like to see me idle, and she thought, ‘What about if we did a cruise?’”
They hooked up with Crystal Cruise Line, and he now lectures around the world several times a year aboard the ship. Recently, he has decided to return to the lectern doing what he loves, just a few times a year.
Obviously, Adams loves books, and estimates he has 20,000 in his house. “I used to read a book a day, but now I read four or five a week. I can think of no book that I haven’t finished reading. Even if it’s a bad book, like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, I will keep reading hoping the good part is at the end.”
Though he is no Oprah, he’s been known to add at least 3,000 copies to the sale of any book he talks about.
Adams was born in Wales. He converted to Judaism while on a trip to Israel to mark Pearl’s (who is Jewish) 50th birthday.
Mr. Pip is set during the Bougainville rebellion in Papua, New Guinea, in the 1990s. The rebellion began as a dispute over land and alleged environmental damage between islanders and multinational copper-mining companies and became a brutal war of independence involving government forces, well-armed militias and foreign mercenaries.
Mr. Pip tells the story of a man who during this time chose to teach the island’s children from the only book available to him, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.
“I chose it because it’s an extremely well-written coming-of-age novel about a little girl. It’s a marvellous story set during a little-known event.”
While on the world cruise, Adams got a chance to meet the New Zealand author of the book and discuss its finer points. “That’s the sort of thing Ilike to pass on to my audience,” he says.
Adams reviews Mr. Pip on June 22 and 23 at 8 p.m and 2 p.m. respectively. Tickets are $35 and available at 416-978-8849 or uofttix.ca.
