February 3, 2009
The latest postal haul
I arrived home today to a mailbox overflowing with literary goodness. The latest issue of The New Quarterly, a brand new Canadian Notes and Queries, as well as The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood by Rachel Power, which should still have been en-route from Australia by sea, but I suspect someone put it on an airplane by mistake– what a treat.
January 16, 2009
Reading never goes out of style
I just ordered Rachel Power‘s book The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood, and I’m looking forward to receiving it whenever seamail sees fit to deliver. Last night we heard Jessica Westhead read two short stories, and now we’re dying to read an entire collection of them. Maud Newton informs me that a new novel by Kate Christensen is out in June. “Drink, Cry, Hate”: Jezebel.com engages gag reflex re. Eat Pray Love interview. Rona Maynard on appreciating our lifelong women’s friendships, which were hardly possible just two generations ago. Tricia Dower on why she’s grateful to have never had an aversion to “speculative fiction”. And Julie Wilson celebrates reading in her wonderful and most inspiring article: “While there are seasons in publishing, reading itself never goes out of style.”
January 10, 2009
New (Canada Reads) Books!!
I really believe that Ben McNally couldn’t have picked a better location for his bookshop than right next door to the building where my husband works. And I am very grateful for a husband kind enough to pick up the Canada Reads stack on his lunch break, just because I can’t wait another day for them. Four new books (because I owned Mercy Among the Children already)!! A couple of which I’d never have picked up otherwise, due to a variety of literary prejudices that I’m pleased to be challenging in the coming weeks. And unlike my usual reviews (where I only write about the books I like enough to do so) I’ll be reading with a critical eye, and ranking these five picks to find a winner. Then I’m looking forward to seeing how my opinion compares to the official panelists’, and to opinion at large.
December 30, 2008
Christmas update
I received a Slanket for Christmas, after years and years of longing, and so I will never have to suffer the agony of cold arms again while reading. It really is the most remarkable bookish accessory, the only problem being that whenever it’s on me I very soon find myself falling asleep. But it did keep me snug as I make my way through my Christmas books. Already did the trick with Lush Life, and I’m sure there’ll be more of the same as I read Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories About Childbirth. I also received Inside the Slidy Diner by Laurel Snyder and Jaime Zollars for me and my yet-born babe, and I bought the baby Night Cars, which I think it really liked. Our beloved Smiths gave us each a book by Todd Parr— The Mommy Book and The Daddy Book. (We now wonder if it might be safe to be prepared, knowing where this kid comes from, and buy it an early copy of Parr’s It’s Okay to be Different). Oh, and we also got us a copy of Pulpy and Midge in our house via a present for Stuart, which meant I was startled in bed the other night as we were reading by Stuart exclaiming in woebegone tones, “Oh no! Pulpy just fell on his potluck contribution!!”
December 16, 2008
Stuff and Things
My new favourite blog of the moment is The Rachel Papers. Find out what Maud Newton has enjoyed reading this year. Hilariously (via Broadsides) is Target Women: Jewelry. Stephanie Nolen is amazing. Rebecca Rosenblum’s best books of the year, and her book shows up on Steven W. Beattie’s. Justine Picardie inspires me to want to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the first time. (Should I? Am I a fool to have waited this long anyway?) I am now reading Darkmans by Nicola Barker, which I’ll be writing more about in a day or two, because how could I possibly not? And Oh Baby, the Places You Will Go (A Book to be Read in Utero) has found its way into my life (via post)– what a treat. Nigel Beale in conversation with Anne Enright.
November 30, 2008
Those Saturdays
Aren’t they the best, those Saturdays you have to be up early in time for the exterminator’s arrival? They certainly pave the way for the best lazy Sundays at least, because though today’s weather is les misérables, I don’t even have to go outside (or at least not much farther than one would venture for a paper). Because I was up so early yesterday that I’d finished reading a book and written 1200 words of fiction before it was time to go out for lunch. Lunch was delightful, yum roast vegetable sandwiches you never fail to satisfy. And then to Book City, to buy a stack of Christmas gifts, fully confident in the direction I was flinging my money. I also had occasion to pick out a jar of luscious jam at the grocery store, which is one of my favourite delights (along with the very fact of preserves in general).
It was coldish outside yesterday, but not really, and the sun was shining, so our walk down to the wool shop was perfectly delightful. I purchased the wool of my dreams for my baby’s blanket, that which we’ll reserve to be the first object to envelop it (save for our arms). The wool is greyish blueish and not babyish at all, which is what I wanted. The blanket will be beautiful and two rows in is (still) perfect.
We continued along Queen St., stopping in at Dufflet for a cake break. Chocolate banana mini-bundt cake did the trick, and then further onwards to Type where I bought another stack of books for other people (oh, book buying without compunction– such a delight!), and then we walked north through Trinity Bellwoods Park and down College Street, through our old hood. We stopped at She Said Boom and I was compelled to buy a copy of the Paris Review Interviews Vol. I, which was book buying with (only) some compunction. I am very excited to read it, and thought it wouldn’t be fair for me to be the only person yesterday for whom I did not buy a book.
We arrived home as the sun went down, and I was cooked my favourite meal for dinner (sweet potato and black bean quesidilla yum). And though I was zonked to death there was energy left for Alex and Bronwyn’s housewarming party, which was thoroughly unnecessary I thought, as their house was already the warmest place I knew. Turned out it got warmer, and the evening was wonderful, but I very did nearly require carrying up the subway stairs as we stumbled home towards bed.
And now an avocado is in my immediate future: fun never, ever ends.
September 30, 2008
A Tower of Books
Courtesy of the Victoria College Book Sale Half-Price Monday, I come home with Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier, According to Mark by Penelope Lively, Flowers for Mrs. Harris by Paul Gallico (original hardcover!), Glass Houses by Penelope Farmer, Best Way You Know How by Christine Pountney, Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived by Penelope Lively, Rainforest by Jenny Diski, Gates of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerland, Diaries of Jane Somers by Doris Lessing, 84 Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff, Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard, Liar by Lynn Crosbie, Child in Time by Ian McEwan, Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner, Regards: Essays by John Gregory Dunne, Between Friends: A Year in Letters by Helen Levine and Oonagh Berry, The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing, and Cleopatra’s Sister by Penelope Lively. Indeed, 25% written by various Penelopes, which is something, no?
September 17, 2008
How fortunate
Oooh, Giller Longlist. And I’ve read not a one. How fortunate, however, that only three of them are by women, and I can only ever be bothered to read books by women, so my bedside stack won’t stack too intimidatingly (and topple in the night and kill me in my sleep, etc.). Indeed, I did somehow find myself in a bookshop today, standing at the cash clutching The Boys in the Trees and Good to a Fault. I’ve been meaning to read the first one for ages, as it’s been recommended by esteemed readers Maud Newton, Stephany Aulenback and Rona Maynard. Of the second book, I know nothing, but the blubs were all by authors I liked, and so I thought, Why not?
September 9, 2008
Once in the world
“I think,” writes Rebecca Rosenblum, of the moment she first saw her book, “once in a while, something can be exactly as good as you dreamt it would be.”
Rebecca’s story collection Once is now out in the world, and we spotted it yesterday in a stack at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival. I bought a copy immediately, and soon after had the great pleasure of listening to Rebecca read from the first story “ContEd”. Pleasure even in spite of the rain, because Rebecca read so beautifully. She even made the sun came out, and so for the rest of day we were dry.
Afterwards, we saw every author I was hoping to see as noted in the post below. And also Dennis Lee, who didn’t seem to remember me from the time he came to my school when I was five.
- Click here to buy Rebecca’s book. She is not the kind of writer I promote because she’s my friend, but rather because she’s the kind of writer so talented I can’t quite believe that she’s my friend. Once should stocked in the shops by some time next week.
- Attend Rebecca’s launch if you can. Monday September 15, 2008 at 7:00. The Gladstone Hotel, Toronto.
September 5, 2008
Coach House Open House
I love Coach House. They keep publishing books I really want to buy and then love reading, which I think is a mark of achievement for an independent press. Tonight we attended the Coach House Open House tonight over on bpNichol Lane, and we had more fun than
you think we would have standing around a parking lot. And not just because there were food and bevvies, or because there was a tour and a chance to see the printing press in action. And not just because we got to see Crissy Calhoun, Ivor Tossell and Julie Wilson either. And not even because we got take advantage of the book sale. (I bought The Girls Who Saw Everything.) But I would probably say that the fun was most definitely a culmination of all these things.
