January 21, 2008
This Little Golden Book belongs to…
I read a review today of a wonderful-sounding book called Golden Legacy. Which set me awash in nostalgia; my favourite Little Golden Book remains We Help Mommy, for reasons which probably have more to do with said nostalgia than literary merit (or the lessons it imparted, which seem to have been minimal). Though there is literary merit, and the illustrations are beautiful. All of this led me to the Little Golden Books website, which tells their story. They were treasures of my childhood, these books. I remember spending ages studying the characters populating the little train on the back of the book, lining up the shiny spines, and the “This Little Golden Book belongs to:” label on the inside cover: here was a book and it was mine!
January 19, 2008
Love is a walkman
I have a soft spot for objects that last. My favourite umbrella (which is semi-retired now). Jeans that will turn four this year, my blue corduroy bag which is five, my always reliable ipod-shuffle, which is three. I so respect solidity, and staying power. That when I spend a few extra bucks, I can be amply rewarded.
But there is one object in particular, revered above all others. Which is my Sony Sports Walkman (1990-2001). In vivid yellow, from Bush to Bush, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, from elementary school to university, and every single time I mowed the lawn. It was dropped, manhandled, made to be play mix-tapes with Air Supply and Peter Cetera, survived the Abba Gold craze, my Beatles obsession, songs taped off the radio, and the theme from Titanic.
Rewinding killed the batteries so I would flick the button to play the other side of the tape, and I got to know the exact second to flick back over when the obsessional-song-du-jour would start up on the other side. A gift from my parents for a school trip to Ottawa, it finally died one day while I was riding the subway East on the Danforth Line, listening to Summer Mix 2001 which contained songs by Sloan, Debbie Gibson, Sophie B. Hawkins and Robbie Williams. (Currency was never my strong suit). The motor went kaput altogether, not surprisingly as for months before songs had been playing too slow.
I kept it for awhile, playing the radio; after eleven years, it was hard to let go. When I replaced it, it was with a Panasonic walkman that I dropped from a six foot height never to listen to again, replaced by another Panasonic that died for no discernible reason (and was hideous), and then a cheap mini-disc player, followed by not-cheap mini-disc player (what a folly, I know!). And then my beloved Ipod shuffle, whose three-year-so-far life span I now know not to take for granted. Dare I hope for a similar reliability to the personal music player I once knew? But ah, few people get so lucky twice in a lifetime.
This all brought on by an interview with Rob Sheffield at BGB. (I was reading his book just one year ago.) Sheffield remains a mix-tape devotee: “This summer I got pulled out of the security line at LaGuardia because I had a Walkman in my bag. The guy was like, “What the hell is this?” They asked, Why do you have an ipod AND a cassette player? I started to explain I just like listening to “Beggars Banquet” and “Let It Bleed” on tape better than on mp3—but fortunately they let me through.”
January 4, 2008
Where to go
Do you dare to use a one-sentence paragraph? Crooked House on “the ‘we’ point of view and E. Nesbit” (“We were the Bastables”). Heather Mallick’s year that was. CBC.ca/art’s 2007 in pop culture. And did Unity Mitford have Hitler’s baby? (I’m inclined to say no– though imagine finding out you were Hitler’s baby?). Check out “the manliest cookbook of all time”. Headline of the day is “Circus School Seeks Students”. Marchand’s year that was: on “grace” as the ultimate gift of Divisidero, “Some readers would have been satisfied with a good novel.”
I recently found reference in a book to pudding finger-painting, which has relieved me of a nagging fear that I’d been a paint-eating child. And though I’m despairing about returning to work on Monday, we’ve got planned in the meantime an afternoon tea at the Four Seasons as consolation.
December 31, 2007
2007 I liked you
And not just because you were the year in which we drove across a European country with the top down.
Happy New Year and all the best for 2008.
December 31, 2007
Year-End Reading Recap
I do my best not to be a passive reader. To select what I read carefully, to engage with what I’m reading through my blog, to read carefully and critically, but also joyfully, and to keep track of what I’m reading. I’ve been reading most actively during the last two years, since I started my list “Books Read Since 2006”. The list from which I was able to discern last year that I read hardly any books by men and/or writers not from three certain countries whose names start with A, B and C. And that though a book or two had been written pre-1900, you’d be hard-pressed to notice from my list.
At the beginning of 2007 I resolved to read more slowly, and to read a “classic” monthly. I was sort of untriumphant on both counts, though the first one I couldn’t really help. I tried. The second, I ended up reading about six classics, falling in love with Middlemarch and Huckleberry Finn in particular. I never did get to Anna Karenina and maybe I never will, but once again I intend to (and will that eventually cease to mean something?). Though I got around to Guns Germs and Steel so anything is possible.
I am also sorry to have not yet read Rachel Cusk’s Arlington Park, which I read described as “If Virginia Woolf were alive in 2007…what she would be writing”. Did you know that I nearly bought it in the Southport Waterstones, but bought a hat down the road instead? And they didn’t have it at the airport bookstore, and back in Canada it could hardly be found at all, and I wanted the paperback, but I think I might spring for the hardback now. If I’ve wanted something for six months, it must be worthwhile.
Regrets aside, it’s been an awfully good year though. Before we go out to dinner this evening, I’ll have finished reading Kate Sutherland’s utterly enjoyable story collection All In Together Girls, which will be #339 on my grand list. (Though I will not enter it until the book is done– the one thing in the world about which I’m superstitious). Which means I’ve read 166 books this year, not bad since I spent 7 months of this year working full time. Not bad in particular since so many of the books I read were brilliant.
This year my reading resolution is quite simple– to read with a pencil. For notes, to underline new words, to deface my books and make them mine. An active reader would do that. Oh there are so many fine books just ahead. And I will start the new year just like I started the old one, with Francine Prose’s wonderful Reading Like a Writer.
Oh and also– not only is my novel entitled What Comes Down, but it is finished.
December 18, 2007
Words I don't know
A wonderful piece in the Guardian Review about (bothering to go about) looking up all those unknown words we encounter all the time. James Meek writes, “For some reason that I have never fully grasped, it is easy for those in the word business to admit any degree of innumeracy (“I’m hopeless with arithmetic”), or helplessness with the daily machinery of their trade (“I don’t know anything about computers”), but difficult to speak frankly about not knowing what a word means.” Though I suspect it’s for the same reason mathematicians don’t like to voice their frustrations with long division.
Oh, but there are so many words I don’t know. As I’ve written here before, I decided to collect unknown words once upon a time, to keep them and tame them. It was while I was living in Japan and devouring battered paperbacks by Margaret Drabble, whose vocabulary still far surpasses mine. Inspired by my ESL students, I started writing down new English words in a little black notebook and the list grew and grew. I was hoping for admission to graduate school within the year and my minuscule vocabulary (consisting too much of “fuck” and “cool”) seemed like it might be an impediment. So I learned: “sybaritic”, “quondam”, “recalcitrant”, “bathetic”, “avuncular”. These are words I know, and whenever I see them, I remember I didn’t always.
But I stopped collecting– I don’t remember why or when. Probably when we moved to Canada, for it is easier to collect English in a land where it is scarce. I think the why also had something to do with leaving our tiny apartment where pencils (and the walls for that matter) were never out of arm’s length–namely I am lazy. But this article by James Meek has inspired me to start again– really. I’m not anticipating grad school, but it’s behind me, which is as good a reason as any to take responsibility for my education now.
Meek writes, “For clarity, we need common, current words; but, used alone, these are commonplace, and as ephemeral as everyday talk. For distinction, we need words not heard every minute, unusual words, large words, foreign words, metaphors; but, used alone, these become bogs, vapours, or at worst, gibberish. What we need is a diction that weds the popular with the dignified, the clear current with the sedgy margins of language and thought.”
“Sedge. n. 1. any of various grasslike plants of the family Cyperaceae, esp of the genus Carex with triangular stems, usu. growing in wet areas. 2. an expanse of this plant.”– though actually I can’t fathom what he means in this context– anyone?
December 13, 2007
Five years ago
It was five years ago today that I went out on the town with this lady, and met a boy who danced as badly as I do. And so much fun and adventure has ensued ever since then.
The moral of the story is that you might just meet your husband in a crowded bar.
December 12, 2007
Post on my mind
Steph with more to say about post has reminded me of my own Ultimate Post Office Story from when we lived in Japan two and a half years ago– do have a read. And I will shut up about post soon, but these days as I read 800 pages of letters, visit my local PO weekly and anticipate red envelopes in my mailbox every day (and they’re beginning to trickle in) the whole thing is very very much on my mind. With pleasure.
December 11, 2007
Ramona Forever
My splendid holidays begin next Wednesday (!!) and go on long, and I’ve got nothing planned but reading sweet reading. However this article revisiting Beverly Cleary (via Kate) has inspired me to reread my copy of Ramona Forever over the break. I used to have all the Ramona books, but that was probably twenty years ago and I’ve so stupidly let all the others get away from me in the meantime. So terribly stupidly that that I’ve still got one left is a bit of a miracle and means those books must have been special– and they were. (Did anyone else notice the inaccuracy in the article though? Because not just “Ralph Mouse” has made it to TV, as I have very vivid memories of rushing home from various places in time to watch the 1988 Ramona TV series on CBC starring Sarah Polley).
Another children’s book lined up for the holidays is The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston.
December 6, 2007
Teacups with stories
“The vast waterfall of history pours down, and a few obituarists fill teacups with the stories.” –Marilyn Johnson, The Dead Beat
