July 24, 2007
Bruising
Kim, of the marvelous Kimbooktu Book Gadget Site, has set up a new page featuring home libraries. Mine’s there, and you can submit yours too. Voyeurism at its best. Due to my current line of work, I found this article on CEO libraries particularly fascinating (via Bookninja). I thought David Halberstam’s essay The History Boys in the latest VF was just extraordinary.
July 20, 2007
Alluding to my rubbisness
Now rereading Margaret Drabble’s The Seven Sisters, which is a rather curious book. I read it first two years ago in England, around the time I got married. It reads differently now, but I notice different things since I went to grad school. I’m enjoying it, though missing the point of innumerable allusions, because I’ve never read The Aeneid. I am rubbish. Where my project this year is brushing up on the classics of the 19th century, perhaps for the next year I ought to get caught up on antiquity. I do fully intend to read The Odyssey though, which is a start. But even in my ignorance, The Seven Sisters remains a good story. There is always something a bit aloof about Drabble’s characters, but this is made up for in the world she creates around them with such acuity.
Next up, one of my annual rereads. Oh, I can’t wait. Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
July 19, 2007
My library
I’ve heard the call from Booklust to “show us yer library”, and so I will. Here’s mine. Though I envisage one day having a library unto itself, right now it’s embedded right into the household with the TV in its midst. Which is not such a terrible thing, really, to get to look at our books all the livelong day. I can gaze up at the colours on those shelves the way I might lie under the Christmas tree just to see the lights sparkle– the effect is as good. My library is arranged in alphabetical order by author’s surname, the one exception being biographies which use subject’s. ‘A’ starts at the bottom of the tall shelf and the alphabet continues up and over to the shorter shelf. I start at the bottom so I don’t look as obsessive-compulsive at first glance. The pile of books to the right of the tall shelf are my discards– for the Victoria Collge Book Sale or for friends to pick through when they come over. Though it hurts me, I make a point of only keeping books I love, and pruning my shelves periodically gives me an enormous sense of well-being. But even still, the collection is spreading rapidly. We have another tall shelf on reserve, currently housing photos, knick-knack paddywhacks, photo albums, and my collection of children’s books but I suspect it will be exclusively books before long. I am looking forward to moving out of our apartment and into a house, so that I can collect away with less compunction.
July 17, 2007
The best of what's around
Heather Mallick’s latest, in which she gets told off by Margaret Atwood (so you learn sans context). I learn that Margaret Drabble is reading Jules Verne this summer (thanks Leah). And that books win! (naturally– though I think there are even books written by people not named Jonathan and also people with xx chromosomes.) India Knight on why erasing history is a bad thing, and so let’s not censor Tintin. Oh! And on Shirley Hughes, who has written some of the books I’ve always loved– a wonderful piece, in which I find out that “Dogger” is real!
July 16, 2007
Workaday Worlds
A frequent complaint about about contemporary fiction, or at least stories which aspire to become contemporary fiction, is that characters don’t work. Whereas in the past, work might have dominated the narrative (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning comes to mind), modern characters’ lives take place after hours. Interesting to note that two exceptions I’ve just thought of are about doctors: Saturday and Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures. I don’t know what that means, however these doctors’ idle contemporaries tend to be artists, academics, or documentary filmmakers, and their work is usually peripheral. Or so it’s been said, but when I think back to the last nineteenth century novel I read (The Portrait of a Ladylast week, of course) nobody there did anything either, save for Henrietta Stackpole. And granted Henrietta’s vocation did give her character particular appeal, and I realize James perhaps is a class thing, and these are all just thoughts to think about. Woolf’s working characters were not usually at the forefront of her novels (or if they were, only subtly so ala Lily Briscoe, though of course she was an artist, which brings us back to the beginning). Many characters in books I read, particularly classics, seem to be bankers, but this tends to entail nothing beyond leaving the house in the morning and coming home in the eve.
I have two things to say about all these unformed thoughts, the first being that though none of this is new, what might be new is how positively unremarkable most modern jobs actually are. I cannot imagine what sort of narrative would grow up around the job I’m doing these days, or many I’ve had in the past. Prosaic is not even the word for many jobs around– mind numbing, soul destroying, base and boring. I am fortunate that such is NOT my experience at the moment, but think of how many people must work in call centres. Think of all the stories that will never be written about call centres. I am not terribly convinced this is a bad thing.
The second thing is that Lionel Shriver, like my very favourite Margaret Drabble, always keeps her characters occupied. An anthropologist in The Female of the Species; pro-tennis players in Double Fault; illustrater, think-tankian, snooker player, variously in The Post-Birthday World; travel guide writer and advertising location scout in We Need to Talk About Kevin. Their occupations make Shriver’s characters whole, their worlds rich, and give their stories legs to stand on. Her details are so fascinating, and I can’t think of how much learning it must have taken to acquire them.
July 14, 2007
Glass Worlds
I was surprised to find that the highlight of my trip to the ROM yesterday was the Glass Worlds Exhibition. Intitially I’d scoffed at the idea of a collection of paperweights, but they turned out to be beautiful and mesmerizing. And bookish too, in their own way, as the exhibit explained to me. As literacy increased, desks became fixtures in many households, as did the paraphernalia which adorned them. And just think of your favourite books: how many of their manuscripts must have been saved from a breeze by the fact of a paperweight? (Though truthfully, actually, I’d suggest not that many. I have a suspicion that functionality was never the ultimate object here).
July 11, 2007
Links of late
Links of late: A Midwest Homecoming is the blog I keep reading aloud to who ever is in earshot, scribed by Ms. Leah with whom I shared a bunkbed in Nottingham for three months nearly five years ago. Absolute hilarity, and bookish goodness too, though I suspect she’ll be changing her title, seeing as she’s just decided to move to Korea.
Also, Oprah Schmoprah— book recommendations by some of the bloggers I like best.
Hands down, the best story in the paper all weekend was Elizabeth Renzetti’s “You’d be a numpty to mess about with the weegies”. She writes, “Before you attack a country, it’s probably best to scan their cultural history. Did the two men who drove a blazing Jeep into Glasgow airport last week know nothing about Scotland’s past? Had they never seen Braveheart? Had they never read Rob Roy? Didn’t they know that it is always a bad idea to mess with an angry Scot, especially one from Glasgow? Ye’ll get a wee skelp and nae doot aboot it.” And it only gets better.
An incredible profile of Chinua Achebe here.
Here for summer reading tips. (Stuart was flattered and surprised to see that his recent reading had qualified him as “The Universal Literary Smartarse”).
July 11, 2007
Wholly visible and reliable
What is it when pathetic fallacy functions in reading? Because at the moment I feel like I’m reading Salt Rain in just the right climate: “the raindrops making an endless circuit from earth to clouds, the same water falling again and again for decades.” 80% humidity is probably as close to the Australian rain forest as Toronto ever gets. It’s a funny thing.
So far Salt Rain is a pretty good story, but then you’ve got to feel sorry for any book that has to follow Henry James. Such an unfair pitting, but the narrative voice feels so slight in comparison. Which came to mind last night when I was reading James Wood’s review of Edward P. Jones’ Aunt Hagar’s Children in The London Review of Books. Writes Wood:
These days, God-like authorial omniscience is permitted only if God is a sweet ghost, the kind with whom the residents can peaceably coexist. This is especially true in most contemporary short stories, where the narrator may be wildly unreliable (first person) or reliably invisible (third person), but not wholly visible and reliable. Few younger contemporary writers risk the kind of biblical interference that Muriel Spark hazards, or that V.S. Naipaul practices in A House for Mr. Biswas, in which the narrative eschatologically leaps ahead to inform us of how the characters will end their lives or casually blinks away years at a time: ‘In all, Mr. Biswas lived six years at The Chase, years so squashed by their own boredom and futility that they could be comprehended in one glance.’ Comprehended by whom?
And now, post-James, I am craving omniscience. And have set myself a little challenge: the next story I begin will have a narrator who is not a sweet ghost at all.
(Update: Oh, yes, I looked it up. “eschatology [esk‐ă‐tol‐ŏji], the theological study or artistic representation of the end of the world.”)
July 8, 2007
Store Bought Women
We shall save the island for next weekend then, as plans were thwarted. For some reason Saturday morning we didn’t wake up until eleven, and this morning we woke up to thunder. Fortunately there was plenty of other fun to be had. Friday night we had dinner at the Brown-Smiths (who become “the Smiths” full-stop come January how exciting!), and relished rooftop patio goodness and finally the CN Tower lit up. I hadn’t seen it before. Clearly I neither get out nor look up enough. Yesterday’s highlight was a swim in the pool at Christie Pitts– what a delight! Sweet relief from the humidity. Today was such a Sunday– I read The Portrait of a Lady (nearly done), worked on a new true story full of lies, and Stuart devoured The Raw Shark Texts in one sitting. This weekend we watched Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and adored it. You might remember that both of us read the book and loved it earlier this year. I love when a film can so well complement the book it came from. Two more days until the new Crowded House! And the big news? This weekend I successfully baked a chocolate cake. This has never happened before, as my cakes have variously exploded, disintegrated, failed to bake etc. But this cake is perfect, and easy. I shall not attempt a different recipe ever again. And tea of the week? Pomegranate Green. Yum zum.
July 6, 2007
Destination
My husband is a miracle. I was stomping around the house like a troll and instead of administering a good slap, he bought train tickets (!!!). Yes, come September we’ve got a Montreal mini-break planned, and I am absolutely thrilled. Plan to become a character out of a Hugh MacLennan novel for the occasion (though I am a girl and therefore that would involve inspidity, hmm). Further, in travel fun, British seaside towns gallery. I vote for Brighton, but where is Skegness? I am excited for the weekend. Travel still, albeit closer to home, we plan to take the ferry to Toronto Island.
