August 7, 2009
Now reading/not reading/etc.
I am now reading Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, and I’m loving it, loving it, loving it. The “book reports” it contains remarkable, not just because Lizzie Skurnick indulges in good nostalgia, but because of the subtext she unearths the second time around– her treatment of classics, including Daughters of Eve, Harriet the Spy, Nothing’s Fair in Fifth Grade, and The Cat Ate My Gymsuit demonstrate something wildly substantial (and subversive) going on in YA literature back in the day.
I’ve not managed to read through a single magazine/periodical since my daughter was born, and so I’ve got a stack beside me on my desk right now and no clue when I’m going to get to them. (FYI: my “desk” is now an end-table beside my gliding chair in the living room, which actually works out quite handily.) There are so many books and so little time that periodicals hardly seem to factor into the equation. I should probably make a new blog label called “Not Reading” and then I could write about it all the time.
Last Friday I had to spent two hours waiting at the Passport Canada office, and they’d probably never seen anyone happier to wait. Mostly because I HAD A BOOK IN MY BAG and BABY WAS ASLEEP IN HER PRAM. Baby stayed asleep for two hours (and then, having exhausted her patience/goodness resource, proceeded to be horrible for the rest of the day, so much so that I was destroyed by evening, but alas) so that I had more uninterrupted reading than I’d had in 2.5 months. It was extraordinary, particularly as I was reading the marvelous Between Interruptions: 30 Women Tell the Truth About Motherhood. Only problem with that being that the book was so engaging, I felt like I’d lived the lives of 31 mothers that day, which probably contributed to my destroyment by 5 pm.
Anyway, speaking of waiting, Rona Maynard on waiting-room lit and Marilynne Robinson’s Home. Rebecca Rosenblum’s submission tips for aspiring writers is also worth a read. The great Lauren Groff, illuminatingly, on rejection notices. What’s wrong with charity book shops? is an interesting (though not conclusive) response to questions raised in the thought-provoking article “Selling Civilization” from Canadian Notes and Queries.
Now, must wake baby, feed baby, change baby. For we’re off to a program at the library that promises songs, and stories and “tickle rhymes” for all. (I’m not sure if it’s sad or amazing that this is my life now.)
July 30, 2009
Bookish books in the post
I only just noticed that the two books I received in the post today both have books on their covers. On the left, we have The Incident Report by Martha Baillie, a library-set novel. I’d actually requested it from the library, which was fitting, I thought, but when I found I was 146 on the holds list, I decided to buy the book instead. I discovered this book via Melanie’s review— it’s structured as a collection of incident reports logged by employees at a public library. As a former library employee myself, I can vouch that these might be as bizarre as you like, and wonder if the fiction will be as wild as fact is. The other book is Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick, whose Fine Lines column I absolutely adore. As she does in the column, Skurnick rereads “teen classics” in this new book (with guests columnists including Meg Cabot, Laura Lippman and Jennifer Weiner). The reviews are hilarious, insightful and bring back long misplaced memories.
I think that both of these books are going to prove delightful in their own particular ways.
July 16, 2009
Good Text
From the Descant blog, Katie Franklin on her feminist erotic bookclub and desire for books: “In The Pleasure of the Text Roland Barthes insists, “the text is a fetish object, and the fetish desires me” (Barthes 27). As a librarian I see how the public forms relationships with their books. Patrons come in exacerbated if the paperback they’ve put on hold hasn’t come in yet: “What do you mean my book hasn’t come in? I need it now!” Such outbursts of desire, which may seem more natural in the bedroom, are often common expressions at the circulation desk of the library. However, I don’t blame them for their yearnings. Everyone is entitled to some good text.”
July 9, 2009
Awful Library Books
My friend K. (of the unfortunately now-defunct Pop-Triad) sent me a link to my favourite website of the day, Awful Library Books, which includes texts such as the one whose cover is seen here. The site features books that might be listed as “required weeding” from American public libraries, and I enjoy the bloggers’ commentary as well (“I think the guy in a wheelchair is saying to the woman, “Do I really have to dress like Mr. Rogers?”). You’re also invited to send your own submissions.
July 8, 2009
Harriet joins the library
Yesterday, at the tender age of six weeks, Harriet became a card-carrying member of the Toronto Public Library. She slept through the ceremony, but did seem to enjoy reading Eco Babies Are Green last evening, and seemed incredibly impressed and grateful when I explained to her how lucky we are to live in a city whose fantastic library resources are available to everybody for free. She also liked the Raffi CD we borrowed (and did you know that he is Victoria College’s most illustrious drop-out?).
May 9, 2009
Thatcher knew the type
“Thatcher knew the type. They broke spines, they dog-eared pages, they scribbled obscene comments in the margins and squashed bugs between the covers, they branded the text with coffee rings, flicked ashes in the binding, wiped freshly excavated ear wax on the end papers, used rusty bobby pins and strips of bacon for bookmarks. Small potatoes, he realized, petty vandalism, but not unconnected to great offences. Thatcher had a panoramic vision when it came to crime, a comprehensive view that took in the roots of evil as well as the fruit. All thanks to the firm, guiding hand of his mother, a long-suffering librarian who filled him in like the empty pages of a notepad, sparing no detail. A child who forgets to return a library book, she had warned, may well grow up to be the kind of person who “forgets” to take a knife out of someone’s back…” –Terry Griggs, “Tag” from Quickening
April 22, 2009
Further excitement
My new issue of The New Quarterly has finally arrived! Honestly, never has there ever been an issue of a lit. journal I’ve so wanted to devour– Elizabeth Hay interviewed, Rebecca Rosenblum on Sassy, even Kim Jernigan’s Editor’s Letter is delightful. And speaking of Rosenblums, this particular one has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for her story “Linh Lai” (published in TNQ). I was also excited to see my favourite poet Jennica Harper up for a poetry award. Further excitement: Margaret Atwood’s Adopt a Word to Create a Story story has been revealed. It’s called “Persiflage in the Library” and it’s very cute (read it here).
April 10, 2009
"On" for just two dollars
Today at my local Toronto Public Library Branch (big ups the Spadina Road massive!) I purchased the word “on” for a new short story by Margaret Atwood. This is part of the Adopt a Word to Create a Story fundraising drive ongoing at TPL branches throughout April. For $2 per word, the story will unfold and be revealed in full at each branch and online on April 22nd. What a fabulous initiative!
March 16, 2009
Catalogues
Like most people who’ve spent time working in libraries, I’ve got a thing about cataloguing. And it’s alpha-order for me as a rule, which you’d know if you’ve ever seen my own library, or my CD collection. I get a bit horrified when I hear about libraries ordered by size or colour, for example, which might be gorgeous to see, but how do you ever find anything? It also makes the books less books than decor, which is gross. The colour chaos of my own alphabetized spines are pretty mesmerizing anyway.
But today I had two overlapping experiences of cataloguing/classification that were quite remarkable. First, we went back to Good Egg in Kensington Market (because the weather was sunny and warm, and evidently most of the city thought the Market was a good destination.) My husband has grown very tired of having to venture in there over and over again to visit “my book”, Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros. (It was actually her other book Falling Cloudberries that I originally coveted, but I decided Apples for Jam would be more practical, and it was almost just as beautiful.) I wasn’t about to just buy it, as it’s quite expensive, but having had enough of lingering in bookstores (he enjoys it less than I do, and it was the second one today), Stuart yanked the copy out of loving arms, and proceeded to the till. So now I own the book of dreams (this week), and can die now.
I’ve written about Good Egg before, how it’s a treasure trove. The books obviously selected with care, but the method of selection not always immediately obvious. That the children’s section contains Alligator Pie, The Carrot Seed, No I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato, and sushi yuppie baby board books. In the window, Omnivore’s Dilemma (obvious) was on display beside Wetlands (for the avocado photo on the cover, I presume). Just the widest interpretation of “food books” imaginable, and I love it.
I love also Apples for Jam, just as much as I thought I would. And how brilliant that the whole book is organized, not by ingredients, or courses, or kinds of dishes, but by colour. Each chapter a colour, except the last two which are “multi-coloured” and”stripes”. So that strawberry sorbet is featured alongside tomato lasagne, beetroot gnocchi with baked ham and cheese bread pudding, white risotto in spinach broth and lemon rice pudding with roasted peaches. The whole book is a rainbow, and the order makes sense. I look forward to trying these recipes, and then the eating. Yum.
March 11, 2009
A cynical deception
“It sometimes seemed to Molly that the library was a place of silent discord and anarchy, its superficial tranquility concealing a babel of assertion and dispute. Fiction is one strident lie– or rather, many competing lies; history is a long narrative of argument and reassessment; travel shouts of self-promotion; biography is just pushing a product. As for autobiography… And all this is just fine. That is the function of books: they offer a point of view, they offer many conflicting points of view, they provoke thought, they provoke irritation and admiration and speculation. They take you out of yourself and put you down somewhere else from whence you never entirely return. If the library were to speak, Molly felt, if it were to speak with a thousand tongues, there would be a deep collective growl coming from the core collection up on the high shelves, where the voices of the nineteenth century would be setting precedents, the bleats and cries of a new opinion, new fashion, new style. The surface repose of a library is a cynical deception.” –Penelope Lively, Consequences
