March 8, 2009
(Almost) Definitive
Oh, this is good. Melanie from Roughing It In the Books gets a bit more definitive than I did about what she’d recommend for the nation to read. Her choice is Thomas Trofimuk’s Doubting Yourself to the Bone, which I’ve never heard of, and have requested at the library. And I’ve managed to narrow it down to two, which is the best I can do. Pickle Me This’s recommendations for Canadian books the whole nation should read is The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Lawrence, and Russell Smith’s Muriella Pent. The first because I bet you have strong opinions of Lawrence based upon having read The Stone Angel in grade twelve, and this might challenge some of them. The second, because it demonstrates that contemporary Canadian fiction can be fabulous to read, and different than anything else you’ve read before.
March 6, 2009
What would you bring?
All week I’ve been contemplating the inevitable– whatever will I decide to bring to the table the day CBC calls me up and asks me to be a panelist on Canada Reads? I’ve thought about this even more than I’ve thought about my Academy Awards acceptance speech, which is saying something. In addition to the fact that I’m delusional.
I’m really convinced that there is merit in celebrating underread “classics”, and that new books indeed could do with a boost, but we just don’t know enough about how they’d stand up yet. My longish shortlist would probably include The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Lawrence, The Watch that Ends the Night by Hugh MacLennan, Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood, and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s The Blue Castle. Of more recent books, perhaps Muriella Pent by Russell Smith, Alligator by Lisa Moore, Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner, The Way the Crow Flies by Anne-Marie MacDonald, or The Republic of Love by Carol Shields.
No doubt you strongly disagree with my picks. But wouldn’t it be boring if you didn’t?
March 3, 2009
Addendum
This occurred to me yesterday as I was making my lunch, as an addendum to the Life-Changing Books list. That I must note Beverly Clearly’s Ramona Quimby, Age 8. Because ever since reading it many years ago, I have been unable to crack a hardboiled egg any other way except slap against my forehead.
March 2, 2009
From the "I should have known better…" file
Do NOT read Andrew Pyper before you go to bed at night. This tip I picked up reading The Killing Circle last year, waking up in the night convinced there was somebody lurking at the bottom of my stairs, even hiding under the bed, or standing over me watching while I slept, so I was not to move a muscle. But I thought I would be safe with early Pyper, with his short story collection Kiss Me. (It had been a gift from the lovely Rebecca Rosenblum after all). And it was the story “Break and Enter” that finally did me in, so that I woke up at 2:30 this morning, not convinced the man was actually gone, the one who’d been standing over me ready to kill me in my dream. In order to shake off the fear, I then had to rouse myself into a state of wake that would last for over two hours. During which I was distracted when the baby kicked, and worried baby wouldn’t kick again when it didn’t. And then when I finally managed to fall back to sleep, I dreamed I was being chased by a wild boar.
I don’t think he had anything to do with the boar, but still– do NOT read Andrew Pyper before you go to bed at night.
February 25, 2009
Swim-Lit
I’ve been swimming five days a week for the past six months, and it’s become such an important part of my life. So much though that I think I’m addicted, but then there are worse things. But I crave it, the way I can stretch into each stroke, the rhythm, the sounds the world makes under water. Though I shower afterwards, I spend the rest of the day smelling of chlorine, but I love it. Pushing off from the wall, arms sweeping the surface, even shaking the water out of my ear. There is something meditative about it, though not wholly because I certainly never spend my lengths thinking of anything very interesting or productive. But it’s the quiet, the echo, feeling all the the way spent when I’m done, yet as invigorated as if I’ve just napped. Drying off and the water drops that remain there, each one singular, stuck fast to my skin.
Via Kate S., I was referred to Swim: A Novel by Marianne Apostolides. I’ve ordered it, and am looking forward to its arrival. An entire novel in lengths– dive in metaphors are too easy, but I’m longing for immersion. I also plan to read Swimming by Nicola Keegan, which is out this summer. And if you’re a publisher looking to peddle anything further in the realm of swim-lit, I’m pretty sure I’m your man.
February 25, 2009
Speaking of gorgeous books
… and speaking of gorgeous books, how about Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant, which entered my life today. And I knew as soon as I saw it, because these days a fabulous book cover design often has these two words behind it: Kelly Hill. I can’t wait to start reading. The book also has me reflecting on literary tortoises, which are really quite common– Lightning from Arcadia springs to mind from the start, because it’s fresh there, and I do know that they came up in Woolf’s essays, if not her fiction (which I’m not sure of). There are more, I’m sure, and one day I’ll write the definitive guide.
February 24, 2009
darkness of a child's heart
“You can control and censor a child’s reading, but you can’t control her interpretations; no one can guess how a message that to adults seems banal or ridiculous or outmoded will alter itself and evolve inside the darkness of a child’s heart.”– Hilary Mantel in The Guardian
February 23, 2009
Books worth it for their covers
From The Guardian Books Blog on Book Covers, I was referred to the AbeBooks promotion 30 Novels Worth Buying for the Cover Alone. Containing some picks I’d definitely concur with– Pickle Me This faves Skim, The Monsters of Templeton, The Boys in the Trees, and Fruit. And so inspiring me to showcase the most gorgeous book I’ve read in ages (albeit not a novel): the McSweeney’s edition of Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends. The “dust jacket” actually constructed of three different panels, so that the multiple dimensions aren’t just an illusion. It was almost the whole reason I bought the book, and I wouldn’t even have been disappointed if the content had not been as brilliant as it was. As it turned out, I was just biblio-spoiled.
February 18, 2009
Life-changing books
Inspired by this post entitled “for the love of reading”, as well as an old episode of This American Life called “The Book That Changed Your Life”, I’ve been thinking a lot about life-changing books. Which are rarer than you think, really, considering the ratio of how many books actually get read to how often life is ever really genuinely changed. I mean, there are books that have been terribly affecting, books that have written themselves into my DNA for how much I’ve come to love them, or books that came my way precisely when I needed them, but I didn’t necessarily start to live differently after reading them.
Top five exceptions as follows:
1) Anne of Green Gables: As I wasn’t so defined before I read this book, I can’t say it changed my life exactly, but I’m confident I would have a different kind of life now had I never read it. For over twenty years, I’ve sought to emulate Anne Shirley’s ambitions, her spirit, her articulateness, her passions, her bookishness, her incorrigibility, and to see the world as she does.
2) “The Grunge Look” by Margaret Atwood: Which isn’t a book, but rather as essay from Writing Away: The PEN Canada Travel Anthology. I encountered the anthology in the Hart House Library during the summer of 2002 when my life was a mess, and it was apparent to me that the only thing I could do to fix it was to run away to England like Atwood had. It was a terribly unwise decision at the time, but in retrospect was the smartest and bravest move of my life.
3) Vegetarian Classics by Jeanne Lemlin: This book taught me how to cook, as well as provided the means for us live very cheaply during the grad school/unemployment years. Our copy is now falling apart, we still use it all the time, and I hope it’s not too terrible how often I just slip in a little bit of beef…
4) Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver: Last summer’s garden was a bust, and Barbara would be horrified if she knew just how addicted I’ve become to bananas, but even still, my eating and shopping habits have been changed since I read her book almost two years ago. The vegetannual has changed the way I eat. The world tastes much better for it.
5) Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. Without it I might still be waiting for a stork.
Fascinating to see how little novels factor in here, particularly because I read as many as I do. Though I wonder if novels change our lives in more subtle ways. I suspect they’re the stuff we’re constructed of more than the signposts along the road.
February 5, 2009
Babies and reading
A few weeks back I was happy to discover that Kate Christensen has a new novel coming out in early June. I’ll be reading it, naturally, though when, I cannot say. If I do happen to be 41 weeks pregnant in early June, then perhaps a good book will be welcome company, though it’s just as likely I’ll be a brand new mother with just a week’s experience, so I probably won’t be reading much of anything.
There are mothers who read, of course– mothers of babies and mothers of toddlers. I know this mostly because I read their blogs, and these mothers provide me with a great deal of reassurance. That having my baby won’t require handing my brain in (or if it does, at least I get it back in a little while). I’ve been planning my summer rereading project already, as I always do, and it’s mainly consisting of easy, well-loved novels that won’t require a great deal of concentration– I’m thinking Good in Bed, Saturday, Happy All the Time, and, if I’m feeling brave, A Novel About My Wife. It would be nice to read maybe one a week? (At the moment I read about three, but then I also work full time.)
I was going to cancel my subscription to The London Review of Books, but I’ve since decided otherwise. I hope motherhood won’t be an excuse to just give up being challenged, and I certainly won’t have to read the whole of every issue. But the articles that interest me are just so interesting, and I learn so much from them. I will be cutting down on the number of periodicals that come into our house though, which probably would be a good idea anyway.
Anyone who has ever had a baby is probably by now hysterical with laughter at my naivete, but let me tell you that whenever I’m told something isn’t possible, I tend to get it done. My mother says that babies sleep a lot. If I remember correctly, Alice Munro has said something much the same, so I believe it. I am also determined to master nursing and reading, which can’t be impossible as I’ve already taught myself to floss and read, and knit and read, so this is just another challenge. But I will try to keep an open mind and my expectations only moderately high.
If by the end of the summer, I’ve read Kate Christensen’s new novel at all, I’ll consider myself not too far off track.
