September 13, 2007

Fictional Fiction

I’ve been thinking about fictional books lately, and of course I’m not the only one. There’s a whole wikipedia page devoted to them (and of course there is). But fictional books have been turning up in my life awfully frequently lately– The Blind Assassin by Laura Chase, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Nikolai Mayevskyj, Briony Tallis’s Atonement, the Great Expections as retold by Matilda and Mr Watts, My Thyme is Up by Reta Winters. I do believe Mr. Ramsay had written a book to prove he’d reached the letter Q, but I don’t think I know its title.

Please pardon the obscure references (but full points to whoever can get them!). Do note, however, that these are only the fictional books found in books I’ve read since the beginning of August. And I haven’t even started on The Raw Shark Texts, which are primarily constructed of such things. Is there something strange going on here?

Now I understand that the ubiquity could have something to do with the books I choose, and my affinity for books about people who write. But sometimes fictional books do turn up in the oddest places. Some have also had profound effects upon me. And which especially, you may ask? The best fictional book I’ve never read would have be Lo, the Flat Hills of my Homeland by none other than A. Mole. And I am also quite fond of Anne Shirley’s short story “Averil’s Atonement”, though of course its commercial nature put me off a bit in the end.

September 6, 2007

BiblioTravel

A chance google search led me to BiblioTravel. Do you know it? Plug in the name of a place, and BiblioTravel will generate a list of books which take place there. How cool. Peterborough brings up Battered Soles, and I’m intrigued. Montreal’s list is epic, naturally, though the lists are incomplete, I’ve found. Thankfully you can add and amend, in a wiki styly. I intend to explore much further.

September 3, 2007

To be read

Just finished Mister Pip, and now on to October. In both books characters are reading Great Expectations. The universe appears to be sending up flares then, and I found a copy of Great Expectations at my mom’s. Officially to be read.

August 29, 2007

Senseless destruction

Disemboweled remains of a book were spotted on the corner of Harbord and Spadina this morning, torn pages blowing in the breeze. A thorough investigation managed to retrieve the book’s title and copyright page at the scene, identifying said book as The Rise of the Canadian Newspaper by Douglas Fetherling, published in Toronto by Oxford University Press in 1990. Witnesses to the aftermath of this violence reported being “sickened” by the senseless destruction, the book evidently torn to pieces in a fit of rage, page by page stripped from the spine. Front and back covers could not be found. The Rise of the Canadian Newspaper will probably be missed by Neil Reynolds, to whom its dedication page was inscribed.

August 24, 2007

Footprints

Oh, I do wonder. About my houseguest who comes from a culture in which bathing is a sacred ritual. Who comes from a culture in which the body is scrubbed clean before one steps into the bath water. Oh, I do wonder. About my houseguest. About what she must have thought this morning. What must she have thought about the footprints in my tub?

August 23, 2007

Shoes off in the house

The arrival of Sayaka, our Japanese houseguest (via Vancouver), has put me back in mind of those little cultural quirks we all possess and would never even notice were it not for someone different to reflect them back to us. Sayaka has been kind enough to keep my reflections to herself today, but I’ve been reminded of back when Stuart and I first met, and I would tell him to just leave his shoes at the door when he came over. And of course I’d take off my shoes when I went to his house, and it was only when his demonic landlady finally blew her top that I realized that my behaviour was considered strange. Not only was she fed up with tripping over my shoes inside her door, but she thought that I took them off in the first place was just bizarre. Stuart admitted he did find it a bit weird when I made him deshoe at my place, but as it was one of a million things he found a bit weird about me, he hadn’t mentioned it. But yeah, now that I mentioned it– English people don’t take off their shoes in their houses!! It never even occurred to me, and I think it’s only a Canadian thing due to climate. Let me tell you though, when we moved to Japan I definitely felt a little cultural affinity. And shoes-off-in-the-house was the only authentically Canadian ritual I could think of that didn’t involve donuts or ice, which was sort of novel.

August 3, 2007

Magic Penny

Disturbing revelations today about the song “Magic Penny”, which I bet you didn’t know was composed by Malvina Reynolds, and which I bet you really didn’t know I used to sing at Sunday School. “Love is something if you give it away, give it away. Love is something if you give it away– you end up having more.” Hmm. Is it any wonder that promiscuity is (apparently) rampant among pre-teens? When giving love away is promoted as the best way to get love back? The song goes on to explain that when you hold on tight to your pennies you get nothing back, but it’s lending and spending that is key to wealth accumulation, and I’m really not so sure about that. No wonder I’ve been led astray! But how illuminating, really, to think the source of so much that ails us can be traced right back to Sunday School. I should have known all along…

July 20, 2007

Babyish

Yesterday I became obsessed with the word “babyish” after it dawned on me that I hadn’t said it in about twenty years. When it used to carry real force, but now it floats like a bubble. I found it amusing that the dictionary says a synonym for “babyish” is “puerile”, just because someone who said “puerile” would probably manage to impress me with their vocab, and yet in essence they would just be pronouncing things “babyish”. Which, really, is quite immature.

The most lovely word I’ve learned all day (thanks to Drabble, my vocab instructor) is empyrean.

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 2, 2007

Connexion

I usually skim over the obituaries in The Globe and Mail each Saturday, because often they contain some marvelous stories. And so I was reading them this Saturday when I came across a woman who would be missed by her grandson, “Sunny Thrasher”. What a name anyway, but I did notice that the deceased woman’s surname was Besen, and I happen to know that it had been a certain “Sunny Besen Thrasher” who played Paul Edison on The Edison Twins.

I just wonder who of all of us who read The Globe obits this weekend made that connection, and I suspect there couldn’t be more than a handful of us obituary-reading Edison Twins anoraks.