July 31, 2006
Longing
Oh, Great Summer Rereading Project, you have done me such good. But oh am I counting down to September, when I can delve into the two Hilary Mantel novels sitting on my bookshelf. I am finding Under the Volcano hardgoing. But I rather cheekily bought Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson on the weekend, just so I will be able to get my British lady novelist fix next. I read it early last summer, and it was brilliant. It’s nice to own it!
July 30, 2006
My fascinating self
The reason I haven’t finished a book in a few days is that I am reading three. I am reading Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, which I am too distracted from at the moment. I am also reading In Fact: The Best of Creative NonFiction, which has some brilliant essays (ie “Shunned” by Meredith Hall, but also others I skip over. And finally, I am reading the newest PEN Anthology Writing Life, which is the anthology to end anthologies. I can’t quite put my finger on why.
I can’t decide why this book should be better than the disappointing anthology I read a few books back. I suppose the fact that the essays are good means something, though the others weren’t bad. The writers here have all achieved a measure of success, and they have learned something in the process that they care to impart (as opposed to “what I learned in the process of just being my fascinating self” which seemed to be the theme in that other book). So many writers here are fiction writers, and what they say has more to do with literature than their fascinating selves. Nobody is whining. Each of the essays has taken such a different approach and tone, and I’ve not yet encountered repetition. And perhaps the “writing life” is just something about which I am passionately curious, and so I will go forth in my reading more readily, enthusiastically, than I would with a book about the “expensive shoe life, and how I lost my bestest friend on the way.” Anyway, the PEN anthology comes so entirely recommended. (Plus there is an essay by Margaret Drabble!)
This weekend we ventured out into the North York Countryside, where Stuart acquired 28 mosquito bites and I got none. We were attending a dinner party at the home of the wonderful Natalie Bay, who had organized a feast for “Unagi Day”. I didn’t know there was an unagi day. It was definitely oishi. We had a lovely time. And then yesterday, we baked our cakeular ode and spent the afternoon under a tree in Trinity Bellwoods Park. Bliss, obviously. Today will be devoted to reading, writing, working on Pickle Me This’s newest publication, and cleaning our disgusting house.
July 27, 2006
Remarkably Busy
I have suddenly found myself remarkably busy, and I don’t know why or how. But I have been writing, and reading. Just finished the wonderful White Teeth, which I didn’t appreciate enough when I first read it during the summer of 2001. Like many other books, I think its Englishness would have been lost on me then, and I don’t know if I would have had the patience for its detail. I liked it though, but I remembered next to nothing about it upon reading a second time. Which basically meant that I got to read it for the first time all over again, but with a better eye, and I loved it. What a feat, and no wonder Smith struggled with her second book, because this book is pretty much untoppable. It was funny, smart and fact-filled. White Teeth is Zadie Smith’s masterpiece, and she really could just put her feet up and watch TV now, if she wanted to. Though she’s better than that, but she could.
I read Lives of Girls and Women before that, and I didn’t love it. I haven’t read Alice Munro in years and so can’t compare it to her other work, but I got the impression that Lives was hammered together as a novel, and it didn’t function well in that respect. I was bored by the end. Each of the stories were strong on their own, but as a collection, this book was not devourable, which to me does not a novel make.
Yesterday’s Facts and Arguments essay on living abroad with a Canadian passport was a terrifically poignant response to all the murmurings going on about evacuations from Lebanon.
July 25, 2006
Hey, that's my (husband's) bike!
To the thief, then. Yeah, you with the wire clippers in the back pocket of your skinny jeans. All right then, take the bike. Steal it right off the porch with a guile I cannot fathom. I just hope you ride it under the wheels of a speeding bus. And you just keep on stealing bikes, again and again, rendering our porches eternally barren. But you will never manage to steal the bikes that live in our hearts; our inner bikes. The truest bikes, which you, of course you dirty bastard, will never ever know.
(Bonus points to whoever got my Reality Bites reference.)
July 23, 2006
Wknd
My story A Big Enough Army won second place in the 2006 Toronto Star Short Story contest, and is online today!
We’re in Peterborough this weekend, and I met up with friends today who I hadn’t seen in years, from when I used to be a delinquent. And in the most exciting news of all, the most wonderfully bookish woman alive (my friend Bronwyn) is getting married. Oh how the tears have been flowing. I am slowly regaining self-control.
July 22, 2006
Bookish News
Glee! Margaret Drabble’s new novel gets a great review in The Guardian. It comes out in Britain in August. Tragically, it’s not out in Canada until October. But I’ll be ok. On reading the right books in the right places. On how the middle class is letting down the public library.
July 20, 2006
Rainbow Styley
Listening to BBC Radio 1 every day has reawakened me to pop music, and I’m on quite a musical bent at the moment. I just bought “Let’s Get Out of This Country” by Camera Obscura, and I continue to adore my last purchase, “The Garden” by Zero 7. In terms of singles, I love Happiness by Orson, Eleanor Put Your Boots On by Franz Ferdinand, All This Love by the Similou, America by Razorlight and Fill My Little World by The Feeling. Oh and the Paris Hilton single. Really.
Just cycled home from Ward’s Island, where we were guests at a house party. How lucky is that? It’s a beautiful evening.
July 17, 2006
On Watermelon
The website of the evening is www.watermelon.org– the online home of the National Watermelon Promotion Board. We are now devouring watermelon smoothies. And obviously, we are now quite happy.
I got In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction from the library today. I am approaching it for a few reasons; the first is that Annie Dillard wrote the intro entitled “Notes for Young Writers”. Some of the best advice I’ve ever read, pointed and concise enough to be manageable. I like “Read for pleasure… Push it a little, but don’t read something totally alien to your nature and then say, “I’ll never be able to write like that.” Of course you won’t. Read books you’d like to write. If you want to write literature, read literature. Write books you’d like to read. Follow your own weirdness.” I’d recommend thumbing through this book even just for this. The book itelf I might not even read, but I am going to give it a try. It will be interesting to compare it to the anthology I read last week, wherein my complaint was of the forced nature of the pieces. This anthology, on the other hand, was compiled after the fact, and it will be interesting to see if this makes a difference. I am also interested in Creative Nonfiction, and confess a bit to not really knowing what it is, and so it will be nice to learn.
And yes, the book came from the library; I am absolutely obsessed with the Toronto Public Library. In the town where I grew up, the library was underfunded, seemed to be closed four days a week and only open until 3:30 when it was at all, and was fundamentally unwelcoming. In years since, I’ve revelled in university libraries, which definitely have their good points but are overwhelming in their austerity. And then there is the library around the corner from my house, which has the ugliest carpet known to man and plenty of Catherine Cookson, but some really great works scattered about, is open late, has nice staff and I can request any book from the Toronto Public Library system be delivered there just for me! I was stupified to learn that such a process was even possible. I feel quite lucky to be able to benefit from it.
Via Bookninja, I read Misery Loves a Memoir: “Contemporary memoirists have taught us mostly how to survive. They haven’t begun to teach us how to live.” I am currently listening to a great podcast, Zadie Smith on On Beauty. She is a brilliant speaker, in terms of how she sounds and what she says.
July 16, 2006
Here and There
The Star Short Story Contest First Prize Winner is published here today. My story appears next week. I bought the Toronto Life Summer Fiction Issue yesterday, lured by Joan Barfoot and Margaret Atwood. Unfortunately, it’s the last Fiction Issue- a sad state of affairs discussed here. Prince Edward County profiled here. The List-Loving Observer gives us 50 Albums that changed music.
