December 30, 2007
Paranormal
Though I’m not sure what kind of higher power I believe in, I know there is something peculiar about books. I know that the language in books can do things their authors never even considered, and that a relationship between one random book and another can transform both works into something entirely new. I know that books take on their own power, and so can libraries. Even a library filed alphabetically like mine can get a bit mystic, as I noticed the other day when I saw this little collection of eyes peering out at me. Creepy, really, these part-faces, and all hanging out together. Thankfully I’ve not noticed the eyes following me across the room.
December 28, 2007
Indulged
This Christmas my bookishness certainly benefited from my proximity to my husband. Or in particular, from my husband’s office’s close proximity to Ben McNally Books, which meant that by listening to me carefully, he was able to satisfy my heart’s desire with remarkable ease. Which was how I came to receive Kate Sutherland’s All In Together Girls and Eleanor Wachtel’s Random Illuminations this year. Stuart is also the reason I am finally going to get my mitts on a copy of The Gathering, as he needed to tack another book on his own online order-via-gift-cards to go postage-free– hurrah! Though I have my dear Bronwyn to thank for delivering me The Uncommon Reader, which is truly a book most extraordinary. From my parents I received George Street Stories, The Annex: Story of a Toronto Neighbourhood, and a gorgeous book of Czech Fairy Tales.
Though of course my heart’s desire can extend beyond books, and some know this very well. Which is how I received a Miffy calendar and Marks and Spencer’s things from my English family. And how I got an elephant tin of tea from the Banff Tea Co. (via my sister). Lots of other lovely things from my friends, family and husband. Oh–and the print by Michael Sowa of flying penguins that I’ve been long long longing for. Am I ever indulged?
Amidst the manic gift receiving, I did manage to give some too, and moreover to have a lovely couple of days with friends and family. I do hope that you experienced something very much the same.
December 20, 2007
Various robins
We received another robin Christmas card today, from England of course, where robins are a winter bird. A harbinger of Santa rather than springtime, which it took me a long time to realize and I still forget sometimes (for only this morning did I finally realize why BBC Radio 1 had been playing “Rockin’ Robin” every day for the past week).
Transatlanticism is a dangerous gig, really. You take robins for granted, or at least Helen Humphreys did in her otherwise impeccable The Frozen Thames: “The Thames has frozen over. Birds have begun to freeze to death, particularly that small symbol of spring, the Robin Redbreast, and instead of allowing this happen, the people of England have taken the birds into their houses so that they may shelter there until spring returns.” But no, of course. “Humphreys lives in Kingston, Ontario.” How was she supposed to know that robins could be such various things?
December 17, 2007
Diamond sharp
The Globe books pages were exciting this weekend. Rebecca Rosenblum’s story in The Journey Stories 19 is called “diamond-sharp”. A great review of When To Walk which I enjoyed reading this Fall. And a review of a new by book by Andrea Barrett whose Servants of the Map I so adored.
Beyond books, Joanna Schneller should be lauded for her article “A Culture Saturated by Sexism”. Though one of Schneller’s most intriguing points was an aside. “In three popular films this year – Knocked Up, Waitress and Juno — women who find themselves accidentally pregnant dismiss the option of abortion almost immediately.” Which is a bit disturbing, but understandable really, and for a most assuring reason: abortion makes for such boring narrative. Or at least everyone I’ve ever known to have had one has just gone on happily with the rest of her life.
December 13, 2007
People instead of their societies
Now reading Ambivalence by Jonathan Garfinkel, and delighting in people instead of just their societies. Which I think might just be the theme of the book, so that’s fortunate. This is the second-last book of my non-fiction commitment and it has been a good ride. Though probably in the future I won’t non-fic in such a binge. I miss the truth and certainty of fiction, and though I have learned very much, my own writing is starting to suffer from a paucity of inspiration. One needs both worlds, I think. But I resolved to read all these books for they were ones I’d been putting off and putting off, and I had to resolve that now was the time sometime. It’s been good for me I think, though now that the end is in sight, I am longing for a prize– a good novel. But there is still good reading to be had in the meantime. A book is a book is a book.
December 12, 2007
Education, Enlightenment and Delight
Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech was so urgent. Indeed I’m not sure how one could learn to be anything without a houseful of books (as insulation and inspiration), however metaphoric or otherwise.
She writes: “We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.”
She raises the question, “How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?”
And it’s an interesting question. Lessing is right, though even if I didn’t think so, she knows better than I do. There is something to be said for listening to one’s elders. The world is where it’s at, and books are its closest cousin, but though I do suspect that a whole day passed on the internet would not be one most productive, so often does the internet manage to serve as a portal not only to literature, but also to the rest of the whole wide world.
Of course my perspective is probably skewed– I tend to stick to bookish blogs and websites anyway. But all the same, just look what I’ve found there lately: Lessing’s speech for starters, which was published in a newspaper halfway around the world; fascinatingly on “little people” in British literature; thoughts on readers within literature; on friendship and what poetry can do; a video of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaking on African writing; some book recommendations.
This year internet sources have pointed me towards books as follows: here for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; here for anything by Kate Christensen; here for Lucky Jim; here for Penelope Fitzgerald (and how fitting! She’s blogged about her today) and Persephone books; I found Laurie Colwin here; and I could go on, but now, in fact, I am beginning to waste time. (See Ms. Lessing, I am listening).
Just as I believe there is no great disconnect between literature and the world, neither does the internet exist in a vacuum; these are worlds which can feed one another. Of course it’s possible to to waste time on the internet, as it’s possible to waste time anywhere, but if you’re discriminating and discerning enough, you can harness the medium. Look around and see that the internet can take you exactly where you want to go– not just towards amusement, but onwards to sources of education, enlightenment, and delight.
December 7, 2007
Now reading finally
I’ve been a bit deranged lately, and Stuart says I’m missing fiction. He keeps trying to foist novels upon me because I’m annoying to live with, but I am bloody minded and as I resolved to read six non-fiction books in a row, surely I will. I am not really convinced the derangement has to do with the non-fic anyway– more instead with Seasonal Mania (which I do seem to come down with every single season).
Anyway, finally, after ages and ages, I am reading Guns Germs and Steel. It has been sitting on my bedside for ages– for so long in fact that the person who lent it to me (Curtis) moved away months ago. 56 pages in, I am enthralled and learning so very much about things I can’t believe I don’t know or never thought to ask. Today as I read it on my lunch break, two strangers stopped me to tell me what a great book it was. Which was strange, really, because the only other time that has ever happened to me was way back when I was reading The Selfish Gene and nobody would leave me alone with it. Strange because you wouldn’t think these unliterary books would be the ones to inspire such bookish enthusiasm. What to make of that?
I am wary though, as both people who stopped to rave about Guns Germs and Steel admitted they hadn’t been able to get all the way through it. And both Curtis and Stuart said pretty much the same, though they enjoyed it still a great deal. Doesn’t bode well though, does it? What if nobody has ever finished this book ever? And as I’m so bloody-minded, what if I end up reading it for the rest of my life?
December 6, 2007
Parentbooks Contest
Though I’m not a parent, the Toronto bookshop Parentbooks still has much to offer. In addition to their specialty books, they’ve got a lovely little kids book section (Corduroy! Be still my heart!) and they’re running an Olivia promotion. Stop in (on Harbord, just west of Bathurst) to enter to win a marvelous basket of Olivia tricks. Contest closes December 14th.
December 5, 2007
Links
What is it– this weird thing where one book leads to another. Would The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasure of Obituaries be the same book had I not just finished Villa Air-Bel? Two books which, you would think, would not be so blatantly linked, but aren’t books surprising?
Villa Air-Bel opens with Lisa Fittko (who I’d never heard of before) guiding Walter Benjamin out of France, over the mountains into Spain. And then she turns up again in The Dead Beat page 50: “Douglas Martin’s vivid obit on Lisa Fittko, a World War II heroine who smuggled numerous people out of Europe, appeared nine days after her death because… “You can’t know all this stuff. That whole period is extremely vague. There are people who will tell you they did this, that, and the other thing, and Doug took days to separate the wheat from the chaff. The Chicago Tribune ran an obit that then had to be corrected extensively because it was all “ucked fup,” as they say in the business.” Though Fittko’s obit weaves together multiple stories and locations and mentions more than a dozen names, one peripheral name had to be correct the next day; an s had been mistakenly tacked onto a French surname.”
What are the odds, I wonder?
December 4, 2007
Library Page
Okay, I don’t know that it’s my favourite song but I am very impressed that Guelph band The BarMitzvah Brothers have a song called “Library Page”. Which is, naturally, about the plight of the library page.
“I first saw this job in grade ten, I really wanted it then.”
