August 28, 2007
Rosie Little blew my mind
(I will write a composed post in a moment, for now, can hysteria guide my way?)
Love at first line– that was all it took. And then Danielle Wood’s Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls managed to grow more fulfilling with every line that followed. I’ve absolutely fallen in love and so wholeheartedly. I will tell you, as it goes, that I thought I’d known love, but now I realize…. Oh but now…
Yesterday morning I sent out an Emergency Book Recommendation urging friends to obtain this book. When informed yesterday evening that a friend of mine had purchased it that afternoon, that I was responsible for just one copy of Rosie Little being sold was immensely gratifying. And my friend will like it. I can’t think of any youngish woman I know who wouldn’t (except the horrible ones, but even they might). I will become this book’s champion. You may receive it as a gift from me in the future, and you will not receive a gift receipt because I know that you most definitely will not need it.
Oh the perfect book– these come along so rarely. I kept waiting for Rosie Little to let me down, because there is no such thing as a free lunch or life isn’t fair, or other such pathetic reasons, but Rosie never faltered. Would it be way too ridiculous to say that RLCTFG blew my mind? Because after all when you begin with what appears to be the pinnacle of pleasure which only intensifies, isn’t that what happens?
Do you remember that first line to which I fell in love (and I will quote it in my review-to-come). From that to the last line? Particularly if you are me? “In a moment, I would take a bold and good-sized step, out into the woods again. But first, I would finish my tea.” Yes yes yes. I finished this book on my lunch break today and returned to my desk unable to function. Symptoms of this are lingering as this post probably makes clear.
The one problem with Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls is, interestingly, in regards to one of the coolest things about it– design. A little black hardcover with a red spine, polka dots and a red shoe on the cover, black endpapers and flyleaf, fairytale fonts. A bit of whimsy, like Rosie herself– small but fierece in mean red boots. Ingenius, I think, but then when I was at Book City on the weekend, I saw it on display beside the cash register with novelty books. I was aghast. Mean boots indeed, this book is substance incarnate. As its champion I may be forced to complain to store management, and really, at this point, I wouldn’t put it past me.
August 22, 2007
Author interview
The fabulous Deanna McFadden has an interview with Janice Kulyk Keefer up here at CBC Words at Large. And you know, it’s not yet too late to still make The Ladies Lending Library a summer read. I started the season out with it (oh, and where has the time gone), and it was wonderful. You will gather as much from Deanna’s interview.
August 22, 2007
On cheap paperbacks
My copy of The Blind Assassin is a mass-market paperback. And though I don’t remember reading it the first time, surprisingly I do remember buying it– that little burst of joy upon realizing here was a whole book for 11.99 and, moreover, I could afford that. The book is wonderful this time around, by the way, but I am also taking particular joy in its mass-market paperbackness. It’s the first such book I’ve read in a long time, and I’d forgotten how satisfying its little bulk can be. Bulk, yes, but fits so conveniently into my bag. I like the way the spine cracks whether I want it to or not, and so the book can’t help but come to be lived in. The Blind Assassin in particular lends itself to this form, I think, in that the novel within the novel is inevitably paperback. The cover design is perfect too, with the gold embossed letters suggesting the sordidness and drama of the story, all the while spelling out “Margaret Atwood”. Which, actually, is exactly right.
August 22, 2007
Big Book of the Berenstain Bears
So I’ve been giving some thought to the types of books I read as an adolescent, but what about the books from even earlier? The picture books? Once again I wish I could tout some high-falutin lit cred from way back in the day, but what I come up with is almost just nonsense. Bookish poppycock, oh, but GOOD bookish poppycock. I loved Amelia Bedelia, Jillian Jiggs, Miss Rumphius (who was not nonsense). Etc. etc. But most of all I did love The Berenstain Bears.
And so I was excited about the re-issue of Big Book of the Berenstain Bears by Stan and Jan Berenstain, and by the chance to go back in time and remember why I liked these books so much. This book is actually five books in one, in which the Bears have a new baby (she appears while Brother and Papa are in the woodshed), get a sitter (nicer than she seems), are afraid of the dark (solution=nightlight), go to the doctor (won’t hurt a bit), and clean their room. A little preachy (life is better when you keep your closet tidy), and not so fashionable in terms of gender roles, but still these are nice little stories. Perhaps they are more suitable for application to real life than flights of the imagination, but this big book would strike me as sensible to have around in the event of children, and five in one is good value to boot.
So where did my fierce love of this series stem from? Upon careful consideration of this compendium, I have managed to trace my attraction back to the Berenstain Bears’ tree house. Marvelously pink with chimneys and windows in the boughs, I wanted to live in a house just like it. I think I also used to be fascinated by the way the Berenstain Bears kept popping up in Dr. Seuss easy-reads, thus existing in multiple literary dimensions. That Brother Bear was never identified by name in the Dr. Seuss books only added to his allure, and made him much more cool and mysterious than might be suggested by the stories in which he collects birds’ nests, or peels down to his underpants for a booster shot.
August 19, 2007
Wonderful…
Now rereading Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, which I remember nothing about. I read it the first time, according to the inside cover, beginning October 8 2001, and finished that October 27 with a note on blank page at the back, “Wonderful…”. Let’s hope it lives up to my previous reception. And that I read it a bit quicker than I did the first time around, as there are so many books I’ve got scheduled to be read before summer is over. Also now reading the latest Walrus which is proving interesting, though The Future of Reading was less interesting than I wanted it to be.
Earlier today I was happy to be reading a little interview with Margaret Drabble (via Maud Newton). “The biggest fate of all is your marriage partner. It’s extraordinary that you should happen to be at such a party or such a university or even on such a bus ride and meet the man that you’re going to marry, for better or worse. I find these accidental conjunctions that turn the plot of your life fascinating.”
News on the homefront: we’ve just cut into our first homegrown watermelon, and we’ve got a Japanese houseguest arriving on Wednesday.
August 19, 2007
On commerical fiction
Once again, I won’t be naming names, as I believe no Google search should take a reader to a review by one who was never meant to read that writer in the first place. Howevert I didn’t start off with a bias. I wanted to read the latest novel by JP because if she’s that popular surely the book would be enjoyable in a summery way, and because I’d read this profile in The Guardian and it intrigued me. I am also very interested in what lies within the massive gulf between fictions popular and literary, and as this latest novel addresses much of the same material as Lionel Shriver’s incredible We Need to Talk About Kevin, I thought here we have a fabulous case study.
In the Guardian profile, JP reports, “I tell my publicist not to send me the New York Times, which if they do write about me only do so in order to be snide. But the best revenge is when I end up top of their bestseller list. Which happens all the time.” (Incidentally I found it amusing that she notes that she is more prolific than Joyce Carol Oates.) I don’t want to be snide at all, but the fact was (and this rarely happens to me) I couldn’t read this book. I tried, I failed, I skimmed to the end and found that I’d called it from the first chapter, and that the big twist at the end was laughably ridiculous.
On top of not naming names, I also believe that those who don’t finish books have no business reviewing them (hello amazon), so I won’t. But I will provide some speculation in regards to that gulf between fictions I noted above. It was interesting that my aborted read of JP’s latest was followed by Digging to America by Anne Tyler. Tyler is literary, but unpretentiously so, and so I imagine her work is easily marketed as commercial, which makes for some effective comparison. Craft: that we are told in the first chapter of the JP book that a character is not what she seems, that nobody knows what lies inside her, while Tyler actually shows us this through multiple perspectives. Character development: that JP’s characters are all basically good albeit with tragic flaws, except the absolute baddie who dies anyway so no matter, whereas some of Anne Tyler’s characters are absolutely rotten, and even the good ones are rotten in parts. Finally: that JP’s story is all situation, a “what-if” but the story never goes beyond that. Could this be the crux then, bad popular fiction at its baddest? That life there seems to be lived entirely on the platform of situation, and nobody ever seems to get off it?
August 19, 2007
If you want your local bookstore to prosper…
A word of advice: if you want your local bookstore to prosper, a good tip might be to give me a gift certificate for it. I regard gift certificates as licence to spend twice as much as usual (naturally– one wouldn’t want to look cheap). I was fortunate to receive a gift from Nicholas Hoare recently, and so yesterday we made a journey out of walking there and back. (I like long long walks. I regard them as licence to eat cake en-route.)
When we arrived at the bookstore, Stuart settled down on a couch with a book of interest to wait out my selection process. (Which is to say that Stuart has come a long way since our trip to Paris’s Shakespeare and Company in April 2003 which was the scene of our very first fight.) And I chose very carefully: I am deeply interested in reading Arlington Park and A Celibate Season, but neither was in stock. However I found eight others, and then narrowed the pile to five, and then three.
What won out in the end were Claire Massud’s first novel When the World Was Steady, Simple Recipes by Madeleine Thien, and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. Each of these writers have wowed me with their more recent works, and I am excited to be venturing into their back catalogues for more.
August 14, 2007
Counting the steps to the door of your heart
There was an instant during “Distant Sun” where the whole world was perfect, and we were swaying, singing. The lullaby that is “Don’t Dream It’s Over”. Their new songs sounded just as good as the ones I know best, and I had to shut my eyes a few times. Crowded House was amazing, and I don’t think I ever appreciated what a live show could truly be. What an absolutely beautiful night.
Coming up is my review of The Raw Shark Texts, and it’s fortunate that I’ve had some time to attempt to get my head around it. Also a review of The Big Book of The Berenstain Bears. Find out what it is to be continuing the aquatic theme with a reread of Margaret Drabble’s The Sea Lady.
Short stories here in The Guardian. As one who gave up on The Bible at the part where Noah’s son finds him drunk and naked, the arguments for and against its readability hold interest for me. “Firstly, there’s the simple point that if the Bible really were the word of God, you’d think that He would be able to make it more interesting”. Jeffrey Eugenides on Middlesex in its second life.
“Do you climb into space?”
August 9, 2007
Claudia's room
I wish I could say that I read well as a child. That I not only precociously toted Shakespeare around, but actually read him. That I delighted in the classics: Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea. I definitely regret throwing a tantrum the year when I received Swallows and Amazons for my birthday, instead of The Truth About Stacey. I did manage some good contemporary fiction: Jean Little, Judy Blume, Norma Klein, Berniece Thurman Hunter, Betty Miles, Marilyn Sachs. And of course there was LM Montgomery, and I covetted anything at all with her name attached. But in general, my taste in books was crap. If I have children I will have to work very hard to remember that bad reading is not necessarily a lifelong affliction. Archie comics were once my heart’s desire, and now I have an MA in English lit, so anyone can turn around. If I could get over The Babysitters Club, there is hope for us all. And just to show how far I’ve come, I give you this blog, in which a young librarian revisits the BSC novels she devoured in her youth. Her reviews are terribly funny, the books are atrocious, and the blog is addictive.
Thanks to Leah for the link.
Update: In related news, everything we ever learned from Judy Blume is profiled here.
August 8, 2007
Golden tomatoes and blue potatoes
Now rereading Carol Shields’s Unless, her masterpiece. I reread this book every summer, an amazing experience that allows one to, for example, pause and ponder the first paragraph for about ten minutes straight. It’s also sad and heartening to be reading this book after having read her book of letters with Blanche Howard in June. I also still maintain that this book is a treatise on novel-writing, which is very exciting seeing as I am returning to my own novel in just a few weeks after this summer of short stories. Anyway, I am enjoying this much the same way I always do, but also differently, of course.
I liked Michael Holroyd’s exasperation with author acknowledgements, as much as acknowledgements are the first part of any book I read. I also enjoyed Holroyd’s sister in law AS Byatt’s treatment of Middlemarch, which you might recall I read for the first time and fell in love with earlier this year. Byatt’s Possession is being “twinned” with Middlemarch for the Vintage Classic Twins Editions, which were brilliantly introduced to me here at dovergreyreader scribbles.
And it’s been nearly a week since I mentioned the garden last– you all must be on the edge of your seats! For your information my husband is now reading Animal Vegetable Miracle and is more obsessed than I was. We revisited the brilliant Trinity Bellwoods Farmers Market and brought home tons of wonderful stuff, including blue potatoes and blackberries. We did a harvest of our garden tonight, and brought in two enormous bowls of tomatoes of all kinds– the window sill is crowded. Tomorrow night I am going to attempt a golden tomato sauce.
