June 30, 2011
Our Best Book from this week's library haul: Cinnamon Baby by Nicola Winstanley
We had very good luck at the library this week, and so to determine a Best Book was difficult. We were delighted with Robert McCloskey’s One Morning in Maine, which was so lovely that Harriet sat through the whole thing even though it was looong. We liked The House Book by Keith DuQuette, Dog in Boots by Greg Gormley, and An Evening at Alfie’s (but then we love all the Alfie books). Our favourite of all of them, however, has been Cinnamon Baby by Nicola Winstanley, about a brand new baby who cries and cries, until her mother (who is a baker) finally soothes her with the smell of cinnamon bread baking in the oven. A very good book for those in our family who remember a certain baby who once cried, and cried, and also for those of us who are absolutely obsessed with babies (hint: not the parents). And Janice Nadeau’s illustrations are as lovely as the prose, whimsical and yet grounded with familiar objects its readers will know. We particularly like the cat who is holding an umbrella…
June 29, 2011
Jiggety Jig
Some of you who’ve been reading awhile know about the summer of 2007 when I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, and grew a gorgeous backyard garden (peppers! tomatoes! cucumber! when a raccoon ate our cantaloupe, and I cried, and watermelon!). We were off to a wonderful start as urban farmers, except the next spring we lost our garden plot when we moved to a new house, our attempts at a pot garden were thwarted by squirrels and shade, we learned we’d had less green thumbs than great soil thanks to the Portuguese gardeners who’d been working away at it for years in our neighbourhood. Anyway, ever since, I’ve pretty much only grown impatiens.
What that summer did, however, is turn me onto fresh food like serious. I realized the difference in taste between local food and food trucked in is worth every penny extra. And especially since I’m now feeding a little person, and trying to teach her to appreciate the marvelous flavours the world offers, I make a point of buying the freshest, best-tasting fruit and vegetables available. And this time of year, there is plenty of stuff available. Becuase the season of abundant abundance has begun (and oh my, to imagine August– bursting peaches, corn on the cob, tomatoes, necterines, and blueberries…), and our local market offered up plenty of delicious this week.
We got garlic scapes (so good roasted on the bbq, with a bit of olive oil), hamburger patties, zucchini, strawberries, raspberries, rainbow chard, basil, cheese, and heirloom cherry tomatoes. Also a strawberry rhubarb pie in the freezer made with fruit that I bought last week.
So many wonderful ways to eat the sunshine…
June 29, 2011
Drabbling 2011
I fell in love with Margaret Drabble in 2004, when I was living in Japan and first read The Radiant Way. After that, every trip to Kobe necessitated a trip to Wantage Books so I could pick up a few more battered Penguins with bright orange spines (or, more often, with orange spines now so faded that they’d become yellow). When we left Japan, I insisted on sending all of my battered Drabbles home by surface mail. Before we came to Canada, we spent six weeks in England, and I bought a whole pile of mid-period Margaret Drabble books at various charity shops. I read her latest The Red Queen. And then I’d read all the Drabbles in the entire world, and suddenly new Drabbles were a rare and precious thing.
This doesn’t happen to me so often. Most of the writers I like have huge backlists and are usually dead, and so I have many resources at my disposal when I want to feast upon their oeuvre– new books, used books, libraries, random boxes on curbs. When I want anything, I rarely have to wait for it. I don’t know the anticipation of lining up for things at midnight, whether it be for Harry Potter or an iPad, but sometimes I wish I did.
Because I kind of do know it, actually, and it’s wonderful. I’ve known it since Drabble’s The Sea Lady came out in 2007, then The Pattern in the Carpet in 2009, and now as I’m reading Drabble’s collected stories A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman. New Drabble prose: precious and rare . I savour every bit of it, and even when there’s no new Drabble in my immediate future, I am comforted by knowing that in this very room, Margaret Drabble is busy cooking up more.
June 27, 2011
Wild Libraries I Have Known: Brewster Ladies Library
Hamilton writer (and fellow member of the Barbara Pym Society!) Judy Pollard Smith writes about the Brewster Ladies Library in Brewster, Massachusetts:
I have a Golden Rule about Libraries. They have to carry Barbara Pym, May Sarton and Edith Wharton. If they carry all three I know they’ll have everything else that good libraries should have. And last week at the Brewster Ladies Libary, I counted several of each writer’s novels, neatly shelved and waiting for patrons to tuck them into their wicker baskets.
In 1852, when Brewster was a flourishing Cape village, Misses Sarah Augusta Mayo and Mary Louise Cobb, along with friends, raised enough money to place a shelf of lending books in the home of Captain Mayo on Main Street. Over the years the library has added a garden dripping with rich vegetation, and a fabulous addition. The original house still serves as a hushed reading room with stained glass windows and the original fireplace. If you listen you can hear the rustle of the Misses skirts as they pass by.
There is a cheerful children’s room with aquarium, story times, toys and books. There are author chats, book discussions, holiday family programs (works out well if it rains on your vacation!) and local artist’s displays.
There are 200 Senior Volunteers, four of whom were sitting gluing the pages back into books when I was there. There are cosy wing chairs, free internet and a general feeling of amicability. Denise at the Reference Desk redefines the words “pleasant, helpful, lovely.” And summer visitors can get a card for no charge.
I say, “Up with those two Misses who started their lending shelf in 1852!” They had no idea what shining threads they were weaving into the posterity of this tiny village.
June 26, 2011
On reading and riots
Last week, a young woman who’d been photographed taking part in the Stanley Cup riots posted an online apology in which she first claimed to take responsibility for her actions, and then indignantly outlined the reasons why blame cast her way was disproportionate: mob mentality, that she’d only committed theft and not arson, the theft was for souvenir purposes, she’d been drunk–nice try, works for rapists– and besides, the whole thing was completely out of character. (I think she may have since had some PR consulting, however. The indignant bits of the post have been removed, and she now reads as genuinely sorry.)
As I read the post last week though, I thought about how much this young woman still had to learn about atonement. That perhaps she was victim of a culture that fools us into thinking public apology trumps being good in the first place. I thought of her remarkable sense of entitlement, how her fierce impression of who she was did not seem at all changed by what she had done. And if she was right, I thought, that her actions that night had indeed been completely out of character, then that was only because she didn’t have any character.
Character, according to Joan Didion (in “On Self-Respect”): “the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life.”
I thought about the mob mentality which the girl claimed had swept her right up, and I sort of understood it. Though you’ve got to wonder about the kind of person who gets swept up in a mob in the first place. These are the kinds of people who think being alive is a spectator sport.
And I thought about how much I dislike the part of church services where a minister speaks, and the congregation responds in unison. How even fans at a baseball game singing the national anthem makes me cringe a bit, because in circumstances like this, we’re speaking automatically, not thinking about anything we are saying. It’s a different kind of mob mentality, and one that is benign, but then I start thinking about the Nuremburg Rally, like it’s all a slippery slope. On the rare occasions when I happen to be in a church, I don’t respond when called on. I listen instead. And the droning sound of everyone’s voices is always a little bit terrifying.
Naturally, I am being melodramatic, but I was also thinking about reading. About how reading can be a communal experience, how it’s an exchange between writer and reader, but mostly how the latter retains his individuality. The power of the reader to regard the text with a discerning eye, and to re-read so the text changes as he does. I’m thinking about how reading is the opposite of mob mentality, and that armed with critical skills to apply to the world, a reader is unlikely to be swept away by any such thing.
There are arguments against this, of course. Someone will always mention Mao’s Little Red Book. But I’m still thinking that to read well is to learn to reside inside one’s own head, and I think there’s such tremendous value in that.
June 26, 2011
Words can't bring me down
“YOU, FEMALE LIVING PERSON, ARE RESPONSIBLE… for your self-esteem, and this means not listening to self-esteem pop or anyone who says you’re perfect. Do you hear Jay-fucking-Z rapping to dudes about how they’re perfect just the way they be? Ever heard a Stroke talk about how he’s a beautiful burst of true-coloured fireworks that makes stars pale in comparison and the sky feel blessed by God? No, right? That’s ’cause guys (super-loosely speaking, straight guys) are sanguine enough in their guyness to not require number-one anthems of hyperbolic over-consolation. Nor do they read self-help books about how to “celebrate” their “flaws.” Nor, in my not-limited experience, do wannabe-men talk about “just being themselves,” because, duh. You were born this way. Now strive to be (and I’m saying be, not look) better. Ain’t but one thing that’s gonna hold you down, and that’s the airbrushed, slicked-on attitude that you’re a precious gem of beinghood that doesn’t ever need to change. Changing is, quite obviously, the only way you get to be a better person. Anyone who tells you not to change is someone who doesn’t care if you lose at life. Girl, it’s just human sense. Just like you’re not inferior, you’re also nowhere close to being “perfect,” you’re not even consistently amazing, you definitely need to fix like six things about yourself, and you can stop singing total bullshit into your hairbrush, like, now.” –Sarah Nicole Prickett, “Women’s Responsibilties” (emphasis mine, because I love that final sentence madly)
June 24, 2011
I have had a happy birthday
3+2 candles. Have finally finished reading Great Expectations. Ice cream is the easiest cake in the world to make. We had five kids under three (and their moms) over to eat the ice cream cake this morning, and the kids were delightful. Their moms are some of the best company I know. And now I’m going out for dinner with my little family, tomorrow we’ll celebrate birthdays, Father’s Day and my mom’s retirement with our extended family, and then piece de resistance is Sunday, when we have afternoon tea at the Windsor Arms Hotel. When, I guess, we will finally have to declare my birthday over. But until then…
Happy Weekend!
June 23, 2011
Penguins in the Post
Oh, there are words to describe yesterday, but they’re not very polite ones. They’re the words I was thinking as I hauled my hysterically tantrumming toddler home from a drop-in we visited in the morning, one that was so nice that apparently Harriet never wanted to go home. She was able to contort her body to become completely rigid (this kid would rock at planking) or to become a wet noodle, therefore rendering stroller get-her-inning completely impossible. She wanted me to carry her, and it was raining, and I couldn’t push a stroller, hold Harriet and an umbrella, so we got soaked. And then I could no longer carry Harriet at all, and that was all she wrote. It was horrid. And we won’t even get started on the whole “leaving the farmer’s market” meltdown in the afternoon, which was even worse, totally embarrassing and annoying. By the time Stuart came home from work, I was totally broken, and once again, considering putting Harriet up for adoption. “But tomorrow will be better,” I told myself, believing this to be somewhat naive, but it is June, mind you, and life is good in June, and indeed, better today has definitely been.
And it still would have been better had I not received this incredible surprise from my pal at Penguin Canada. A Penguin tote bag (which would be enough in itself) packed with 24 Mini Moderns. But it would not be possible to receive a package like this, and for a day not to be made. And yes, partly because we’re in our third week of a mail strike and I’ve been missing surprises at my door, and partly because these books are so brilliantly Penguinesque in their design and because I can’t wait to find a place where I can line them all up in a row, and because there are authors I love here, and others still yet to be discovered. But mostly because now I am totally assured that there is such brilliant possibility in never knowing what a new day might deliver.
June 22, 2011
Best Canadian Essays 2011
As one who reveres books as much as the next person who really, really loves them, you can imagine that I’m overjoyed to announce that very soon I will be published in one. I am so honoured that my essay “Love is a Let-Down”, which is the little essay that still hasn’t stopped, will be included in Best Canadian Essays 2011, part of an amazing series published by Tightrope Books. Quite grateful to editors Ibi Kaslik and Christopher Doda, and to the wonderful people at The New Quarterly who gave my piece its first home. And the staff at Peterborough Chapters better order in a whole bunch, because my mom is totally going to buy *all* of them. Looking forward also to my piece appearing, along with other fine writers’, amongst Caroline Adderson’s— speaking of honoured. And so pleased that I’m finally going to know what these guys are talking about.
June 22, 2011
Our Best Book from this week's library haul: Goldie and the Three Bears
Diane Stanley’s Goldie and the Three Bears gets this week’s nod mostly because while I think it’s a pretty good picture book, Harriet is absolutely obsessed with it. (This also makes 2/3 weeks where our best book has been one Harriet has randomly pulled off the shelf with no regard for anything except chaos.) I love the detailed illustrations, and that this twist on an old story stands up perfectly fine all on its own. Goldie is a very picky little girl (the swing is “too high”, the movie is “too scary”, her peanut butter sandwich is only “just right” when it’s on white bread, no jelly, with the crusts cut off), which makes it hard for her to make friends (because Penny is too boring, and Jenny is too rough). When one day she gets off the bus at the wrong stop, however, she stumbles into an empty house, and tries a few sandwiches, sits in a few chairs, falls asleep in somebody’s bed, and in the process, makes a friend–one she can love with all her heart. Which sounds cheesy, but it isn’t, and we like the pictures of the friends climbing trees, building block towers, and have an elaborate tea party. If there has to be a story I read 10 times a day for a week, I am awfully glad it is this one.
