November 18, 2010
Behind every TPL Librarian…
In my experience, behind every Toronto Public Library librarian, there is a little bit of awesome. Take TPL Librarian Martha Baillie for instance, whose awesome behind her is the acclaimed and wondrous The Incident Report. I’ve already mentioned our local librarian Mariella, who goes around the world telling stories, but we get to hear her in our neighbourhood every week. A whole lot of awesome, I thought, but it turned out to not even be the half of it.
For the last month, we’ve been attending the toddler program at the Lillian H. Smith
branch, being just on the verge of having outgrown Spadina Road’s Baby Time. And we love it– Harriet gets to run around, gaze at big kids, misbehave, sing songs, play games, do the beanbag song, and hear stories read by Joanne, who we adored from the get-go. Back at Spadina, I was telling Mariella about how much we were enjoying it, and she asked me if we’d read Joanne’s books.
“Joanne has books?” I asked. Of course she does, and Mariella directed us to Our Corner Grocery Store and City Alphabet. The marvelous Joanne is actually Joanne Schwartz, who is as talented at writing books as she is at reading them. And I’ve really enjoyed them, her text perfectly complementing the images by photographer Matt Beam and illustrator Laura Beingessner. Both are generically urban enough to be from anywhere, but I can’t help but see Toronto on every page. Both books, in very different ways, celebrating urban communities and particular uniquenesses that characterize the places where we live.
October 29, 2010
Mariella Bertelli performs The Frog
We’re lucky enough to have Spadina Road as our closest Toronto Public Library branch, where Mariella runs the children’s programming. Since Harriet was eight weeks old, Mariella has been delighting our whole family with her storytelling, her games and songs. And now she’s on Youtube– Mariella for everyone! Here is Mariella performing The Frog.
July 29, 2010
Imagine a place
Yesterday Harriet crawled around the library lusting after other children’s nannies, and so I sat idly by the picture book shelf to see what I could see. My favourite discovery was Imagine a Place by Sarah L. Thomson, but in particular, the images by Rob Gonsalves. Amazing, mesmerizing pictures that become more magical the longer you look.
April 4, 2010
A Moral Dilemma
This morning whilst out on a quest for hot-cross buns, my husband brought me home a moral dilemma. He’d found Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: Subversive Children’s Literature by Alison Lurie in a box on the sidewalk, and he thought (quite correctly) that I’d like it. The only trouble was that it’s a Toronto Public Library book and it hasn’t even been discharged.
So, what to do? The book is stolen property, but I feel removed enough from the scene of the crime that I could let myself get away from profiting from it. But what kind of scoundrel allows a theft from the public library to go unrighted? Though would returning it cause undue paperwork for overworked librarians? I’ve looked this book up in the system, and there are eleven other copies– which don’t seem to include this one. Perhaps they’ve accepted that it’s gone for good, and so who am I to challenge that? If I decided to take it back anyway, where exactly would I take it? This book is from the Toronto Library’s “Travelling Branch”, which (I think) means I’d have to go chasing after the bookmobile…
March 30, 2010
On community
I joined Twitter about a month ago, and I’m still not quite sold. First, twitter vocabulary makes me cringe. It also gives me a window into a whole host of things going on that I’m not a part of, so I feel left out, and I probably liked it better when I didn’t know what I was missing. That said, it is the best way to get links to great content, and I really appreciate that. Some people manage to be consistantly hilarious in 140 characters. Interesting to note that my favourite people to follow tend to have columns in major newspapers– either they’re terribly good with words, or they have more free time than the rest of us.
The point of Twitter is community, though Twitter is not so much where the action takes place, but it can point you in the direction of the places where things are happening. And because there are a lot of these places, Twitter becomes very useful.
Julie Wilson’s Book Madam and Associates is in full swing: “a collective of publishing and media professionals who love bright ideas and have been known to have a few of their own.” She’s just announced her crew of associates, and the group of them managed to pack an Irish pub last Thursday night. The Book Madam has also just announced her online Book Club’s first pick: Amphibian by Carla Gunn. It’s like Oprah, but with less conflict with Frey and Franzen.
The Keepin’ it Real Book Club has yet to come down from their Canada Reads: Civilians Read high. (And okay, I’ve just read their latest post in which I was referred to nicely. Which I didn’t plan, but I still like it. Community sure has its good points). Newest side project is “Books in 140 Seconds”, which is a whole Book Club meeting in 140 seconds. They read Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld to start things off: check out the first video here. (Aside: I hated Prep, in case you’re wondering, and didn’t come to love Sittenfeld until American Wife.)
The KIRBC has also got behind the Toronto Public Library’s amazing Keep Toronto Reading campaign. 99 reading journals are currently floating around the city, they have a Books We Love promotion with readers doing video pitches, and many other events, online and otherwise.
March 4, 2010
Why I love the Toronto Public Library/ How the internet gets books read
I am an avid buyer, mostly because I can’t quit, but also because any person who loves books really should be. If I bought every book I wanted, however, I’d have to move to a warehouse and I’d be totally broke, so I am pleased to have the best public library system in the world at my disposal so I can eat its book-buying dust. In a good way.
Waiting for me at the library today was The Sixties by Jenny Diski (of the LRB blog, and many elsewheres), When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (which I read about on the The Guardian Books Blog), and Picking Bones from Ash by Marie Matsuki Mockett (because Maud Newton said so).
February 8, 2010
Furnishing a room
Our house is currently in a state of upheaval as we begin the process of moving the baby into her own room. We’ve got a faint hope that it might help her sleep better, and after eight months of enjoying having her close, we want our room back. And no doubt she’ll be joining us there most nights anyway (and yay for reluctant co-sleeping, which is much better than being awake).
Baby will be moving into the spare-room/ office/ library, however, so the books have had to migrate living-room-ward. Which at first I was sad about, that the books would be losing a room of their own, but now having them out in the world again, I realize that I’ve missed them. How little I visited our library, unless I had a reason to, and how nice the spines are just to stare at, and the journeys they could take me on from my seat here in the gliding chair.
And I realize that books have been missing from this room all along. It’s so nice to be back among them. The aesthetic effect of their various colours and heights. How the walls were empty before, and the floor just too wide, and how the built-in shelf beside the fireplace was wasted before now. It’s true, they do– they furnish a room! And joyfully, because televisions don’t, we’re getting rid of ours, so just excuse the focal point in the photo in the meantime.
January 13, 2010
The library is doing nothing
The library is doing nothing to relieve me of my obsessive compulsive bookbuying ways. Instead, the library is widening my exposure to books I will DIE if I do not own. Lately, in this way, the following books have made their way into my library and into Harriet’s: Kiss the Joy as It Flies by Sheree Fitch (about which more is to come), 365 Activities You and Your Baby Will Love,
Baby Sign Language Basics, Ten Little Fingers Ten Little Toes by our beloved Mem Fox, Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, and How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad. And now I also really think I need a copy of The Sleeping Life by Kerry Ryan. I’m not going to mention the two novels I picked up at the used bookstore this morning (Small Ceremonies and Muriella Pent, borrowed from libraries year ago; how did I live this long without them?) because I don’t want my husband to find out about them. (If he happened to, however, read this far in this entry, he’d be relieved to know at least that I’ve read both of them already so the to-be-read shelf has not grown at all.)
Anyway, that is it. I am cut off. No book buying until March.
January 8, 2010
A bit overwhelming
“Maybe–“, I said to my husband last evening. And then I couldn’t go on, because to do so would be to put a name to the problem that mustn’t be named (or at least not by me. Husband names it frequently, which is the problem). But I can’t hold it in anymore: “Maybe there are too many books in my life at the moment.” Because it’s gotten a bit overwhelming. Would be less so if I could stop requesting books from the library all the time, and if the Toronto Public Library holdings didn’t contain every one of my heart’s desires. (I am now hold 34 of 161 for Patrick Swayze’s autobiography. Yes, I too am not sure if this is really necessary).
I am currently reading Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen. I’ve also been reading the poetry collection The Sleeping Life by Kerry Ryan, which is pretty wintry so far, so it feels like the right book for now, though my life hasn’t been very sleeping for a long time. Progress is slow on the Alcott book, which is no matter on one hand because the book is very good, but then I’ve got such a backlog of books waiting. Like the Canada Reads: Independently books, which I’m going to start shortly. Beginning with Ray Smith’s Century, I think, because that is the one I’m most scared of.
And to make up for the dullness of this post, I give you a glimpse of me and technology circa 1987.
December 10, 2009
Pathos and other things
If I look tired here, it’s because I am! It’s been a hard, hard, hard few weeks. I think I’m blaming it on teeth, as there are two teeth apparent but remarkably sloooow at coming in (it’s been two weeks now, and they’re just creeping past the gums). There’s been a lot of screaming all the livelong day, and a lot of not sleeping all the deadlong night, and now I’ve just learned the joy of pushing a stroller along snowy sidewalks that people don’t shovel. Today I was a lesson in pathos as I shoved my stroller up over snowy curbs, the rain cover ripped and flew up in my face, my boots were leaking, buttons dripping off my coat, and I got splashed by a taxi-cab. The whole thing was very sad. And I won’t even get started on the middle of last night, when the baby would only stop crying when she was throwing up in my bed.
Motherhood is not always as romantic as I dreamed it would be.
There are good things: wonderful books to read, of course. I’ve been doing ongoing Christmas baking. I’m knitting Harriet a Christmas stocking. I finally completed a short story for the first time since Harriet’s birth. My short story contest win. Friends to spend afternoons with. Yesterday’s visit to the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books. That Harriet’s intensive lessons in waving hello and goodbye are starting to pay off. Advent calendar fun at every turn.
Speaking of, I’m loving The Advent Books Blog. I love reading the recommendations for books I have no intention of reading even, I love that different kinds of books that readers are so passionate about, and I like the linky places the recommenders’ biographies are taking me.
I love this post about Christmas shopping at the library. DoveGreyReader on readers vs. critics. Maureen Corrigan on passionate books for the holidays. Rebecca (delightfully) on names and naming. And I found this old interview with Allan Ahlberg, which was interesting. (Peepo is a favourite around our house.)
Now must go eat… something. And begin reading An Education by Lynn Barber.
UPDATE: For those who care, the second tooth is finally in, and we’ve got a bit of peace around here. Hurrah! I’ve also found a cheap second-hand jogging stroller online that will make my pedestrian life a little less pathetic this winter.
