February 12, 2010
Why I have business in the bedroom of Adam Giambrone
I don’t know if there are two things I like more than passing judgement and reading stories, and so I’ve been wholly absorbed by the perils of Adam Giambrone this week. I’ve long had my eye on the guy, if only to use his surname as verb in various contexts, which is always funny when I’m overtired, and so I’ve been paying attention since Monday, however much that’s less than high-minded to admit.
I’ve been paying attention because I’m a follower of plot, of twists and turns, and wild leaps. Office couches, text messages, denials then tears at the press conference. The scintillating details, the text messages, and we’re not supposed to care because it’s his private life after all, but don’t you care just for that reason? The kind of access to private lives that we usually have to read novels for, and perhaps it’s why we read novels anyway. How can you turn away from it? I can’t.
Of course, there are real people involved, real lives at stake. To which I posit that there aren’t. Case in point, the picture above from The Toronto Star— have you ever seen a more calculated chemistry? I could say I’m sorry for the wife, but I wouldn’t really mean it. To pretend otherwise would be disingenuous. Giambrone himself has become a fiction, has probably long been one, but we know it now. If he were less lame, he’d be Jay Gatsby. And of course, there’s a real Giambrone still deep down inside him, but that’s not the guy upon whom I’m passing judgement.
The guy upon whom I’m passing judgement is an idiot. Not only does he think that women are disposable, but he dates the kind of woman who wouldn’t hesitate to destroy his whole career in a heartbeat. The kind of woman who’d date him even though she thinks he lives with his parents, and he’s 32. And– though this population is larger than I’d initially suspected — he dates the kind of woman who’d tolerate that haircut. He gets caught, and he lies about it. He someone who knows himself better than anyone else knows him and yet he sets himself up for this exact situation by pursuing public life (which, let’s face it, most people don’t do for really honorable reasons). Even the smartest guy would have trouble balancing his public face with a life that’s a lie.
I’m not condemning Adam Giambrone for immorality, for that kind of thing is always a little bit subjective, but I think I’m allowed to call it as I see it– he’s an idiot.
I hate the word “peccadillo”. Why do women never get to have those? A “peccadillo” trivializes all manner of sins, packs them up in a neat valise that rhymes with armadillo, and how convenient is that? And then someone will lecture me about casting first stones, but these guys get up to the kind of wrongdoing I’d never consider. I know I’m young, but I’m getting older every day, and I remain steadfast about this. And to suggest that I’m just naive then is an insult to men of integrity everywhere, and I’ve met an awful lot of these in my life. I just think we all deserve a lot better.
February 10, 2010
As long as it's not dangerous
“The Cambridge History of English Literature was my constant companion, and it became infused with my cigarette smoke as I plodded through the pages. Almost all my women friends were smokers, some using cigarettes to affect a social ease and grace; others, more dependent upon them, becoming chain smokers. I myself was convinced that without a cigarette in my mouth I could neither study nor exercise any creativity. All unconscious of future revelations about nicotine, my mother would say to me, ‘Why not– as long as it’s not dangerous.’ And so I smoked my way through the Cambridge History of English Literature.” –from Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion by Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern (which is wonderful)
February 10, 2010
Things India Knight likes
Writer India Knight has long been included on a list of things I like, but today she has managed to drive me mad with ecstasy via her blog Things I like. Now with Search Button. In particular, her things to read tag, from which I found myself directed to Curious Pages, The Reading Weekend and Missed Connections. Pre-Miffy Bruna— amazing. I now want a beautiful house in Brussels, a giant owl, and to be Tavi. Such a wonderful catalogue of marvelous things. Image from this post— turns out Salinger’s covers weren’t always so enigmatic.
February 1, 2010
Meet the Smiths
I’ve got a family of Smiths on my bookshelf. Probably you do too. Mine are diverse but an excellently harmonious bunch. There’s Ali, of course, of The Accidental and Girl Meets Boy. And then Alison, of the poetry collection Six Mats and One Year. Next is Betty, who wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Beside her is Ray, then Russell, and Zadie, who have brought to the library Century, Muriella Pent and White Teeth/On Beauty, respectively.
This is the largest clan in my library, save for the Mitfords who don’t actually count because they’re really sisters. And I’m not sure if this bunch is alike or unhappy in their own way, but I like how their jackets rub together anyway.
January 27, 2010
Guh-gung
I have this terrible habit of finding certain things terribly funny in theory, but not considering the long-term consequences of following through on my actions. For example, when I was #143 on the holds list for Patrick Swayze’s posthumous autobiography Time of My Life, it was a funny story. But that hold was going to come in sometime, and that sometime is today, and now, with all the books in my life to be read, I’ve got to add Time of My Life to the teetering stack. A book with such lines as, “It felt like an electric charge suddenly coursed through my body. I looked into Lisa’s eyes, and it was as if I was seeing her for the first time. We moved together as one, and I felt a stirring deep in my soul.” And then a few pages on, he woos her to the sounds of Bread’s “Baby I’m-a Want You.” When they finally have sex on page 46, “it was like a dam had broken and the flood came rushing in.”
This is either going to be the best book ever, or the worst.
January 24, 2010
Kettle from a headlight
Today I loved Cut/Paste: Creative Reuse in Canadian Design, an exhibit on at the Royal Ontario Museum until the end of the month. Featuring a gorgeous quilt made out of ugly one size-fits-all t-shirts, a toaster fashioned illicitly in penitentiaries out of a cigarette tin, guitar string and a shingle, a lamp made out of a chair, jewelry made out of skateboard decks, and a coffee table made from a toboggon. But my favourite was the K-42 Electric (tea!) Kettle manufactured by GE in the 1940s. Materials were scarce due to wartime, so the kettle was made from a recycled car headlight, but it would set a standard for kettle design throughout the 1950s, and become iconic in kettlish realms. (Image taken from The Canadian Design Resource).
January 22, 2010
An admission and some understanding
I have an admission to make, one that will win me no friends. And while usually I do not knock the books I hate here, this book is so well-loved, I think it can take it. I HATE The Number One Ladies Detective Agency. I got this book free out of a cereal box in 2003 (true story!), and have received it as a gift no less than three times since then. I read it once and found it so boring, I found it offensive, not credible as literature. And I know this will rankle many a reader now, because people love Precious Ramotswe and Alexander McCall Smith, but for the life of me, I could never undertand why.
Until now. I get it now! I still hate The Number One Ladies Detective Agency, but I think my love of Flavia de Luce and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is analogous to how other readers must feel about Precious and Number One… And not just because they’re both books with colonial flavour, written by old white men in unlikely voices (whether they be those of Botswanan lady detectives, or eleven year-old English girls). I think neither book is meant to ring especially true, authenticity is not the object, that these books get by on their charm, and charming is most definitely in the eye of the beholder.
Stay tuned for a review of Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie from the perspective of this beholder. I loved that book indeed.
January 20, 2010
Book charm
On an ordinary day, Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion would have been the most interesting book of any stack I picked up from the library. (I found out about this book from the Louisa May Alcott bio. It has the best cover I have ever seen. And that I am excited about a book with such a cover really does catapult me into a new league of nurd. Fortunately, I’ll keep it to myself and no one will ever know…).
But today was the day I also came home from the library with the gorgeous Bothered by My Green Conscience, the less gorgeous might be stupid but it was sitting on a table so I picked it up Sleep is For the Weak: The best of the mommybloggers, and Sheree Fitch’s book of poetry for adult readers In this house are many women.
And just when you thought books couldn’t be anymore charming, I’ve just joined the league of people who’ve discovered Flavia de Luce. Now reading the Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, which I have a terrible suspicion might be a literary love letter only for me: literary Harriets, a nod to Harriet the Spy herself (perhaps not on purpose, but still…), references to tea, and to pie, and literary allusions, and libraries to get lost in, plus she has a bike called Gladys. When I used to have a bike called Gladys, pink with a basket when we lived in Japan. Anyway, the connections are uncanny, delightful, and maybe Alan Bradley and I are long-lost somethings. The book is wonderful. I’m zipping through it and will be posting a review in days to come.
January 15, 2010
i hated wolf hall is it me
I could write a post every day of strange internet search terms that bring folks to Pickle Me This. I don’t do this every day, however, because it’s lame, easy, and gets old fast. These terms are sometimes educational though– it’s only through my stats I realized that people are really interested in Leah McLaren’s marital status and in Burmese sex. But could you please indulge me this one day? This one day in which people arrived searching for “masterful literary blogs” (oh, and have you ever arrived!), “i got an incident report at work how bad is it”, and my very favourite (do you think they found what they were looking for?) “i hated wolf hall is it me” (and I doubt it).
January 13, 2010
The library is doing nothing
The library is doing nothing to relieve me of my obsessive compulsive bookbuying ways. Instead, the library is widening my exposure to books I will DIE if I do not own. Lately, in this way, the following books have made their way into my library and into Harriet’s: Kiss the Joy as It Flies by Sheree Fitch (about which more is to come), 365 Activities You and Your Baby Will Love,
Baby Sign Language Basics, Ten Little Fingers Ten Little Toes by our beloved Mem Fox, Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, and How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad. And now I also really think I need a copy of The Sleeping Life by Kerry Ryan. I’m not going to mention the two novels I picked up at the used bookstore this morning (Small Ceremonies and Muriella Pent, borrowed from libraries year ago; how did I live this long without them?) because I don’t want my husband to find out about them. (If he happened to, however, read this far in this entry, he’d be relieved to know at least that I’ve read both of them already so the to-be-read shelf has not grown at all.)
Anyway, that is it. I am cut off. No book buying until March.
