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.
August 16, 2007
The Raw Shark Lady
An interview with Steven Hall up at Baby Got Books. And yes indeed it is funny to be reading Drabble’s The Sea Lady post The Raw Shark Texts. Two books with very little in common except fish and unconventional narrative structure, but how they inform each other just based on their proximity. I am rereading The Sea Lady because I read it too quickly the first time, so excited was I by a Drabble yet unread. I’m paying much more attention this time around, and loving it just as much.
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 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”).
May 11, 2007
Friday morning
Zadie Smith has a short story in The New Yorker. They’re going on about novel first lines over at The Guardian Books Blog; I was pleased that my personal favourite was noted (“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York”). And we’re away to Peterborough this weekend (the ultimate tourist destination). It’s a long weekend too, because we made it that way. Tra-la.
Oh, and log on now to Diggerland.com.
April 24, 2007
It's hard to find good music
Indeed, I successfully defended my Masters Thesis yesterday, and came home to this beautiful bouquet sent by my family. Lucky I, and luckier still for this Saturday afternoon Stuart and I are going out to celebrate the end of school in the fashion I have chosen, and it is a very special fashion. I can’t wait to tell you all about it.
Linkylink:
-Find an update over at my hobby blog Now Doing! Posted are pictures of the blanket I knit this winter, and my current patchwork project.
-I was thrilled to find out that the marvelous Saffrina Welch has started a blog. Saff is a friend of Stu’s from uni, and when she and her boyfriend Ivan came to stay with us in December, we had a brilliant time. So it will be fun to see what she gets up to online.
-Bookwise, I was happy to see that Karen Connelly’s The Lizard Cage has been nominated for the Orange Award for New Writers. As I expressed when I read it last March, The Lizard Cage is an extraordinary novel, and deserves so much recognition.
-I’ve never read Barbara Pym, but I feel like I ought to after having read this wonderful feature on the Barbara Pym Society Conference.
-And on an unrelated note: Kirsten Dunst is credited with saying: “I was brought up on Guns ‘N Roses, the Les Miserables soundtrack and anything my mother listened to. But it’s much harder to find great music these days.” Bless.
Still reading Happenstance very happily, though copy errors make my eyes bleed. I also picked up the new Hart House Review today and it’s absolutely beautiful. The ever-accomplished Rebecca Rosenblum took a top prize for fiction. Congratulations RR! Some poetry as well by other creative writing comrades. What a bunch.
April 20, 2007
Greetings
Greetings from the state of things! From the land of green grass, blue skies, painted toenails, sandals and cropped trousers. Exposed tattoo courtesy of the University of Saskatchewan Women’s Studies Program (no relation). Today I am going out in the sunshine to drop off the marked-essays and then get my hair cut. Tonight I’ve got a party with my creative writing comrades. I just spent a half hour on hold with Passports Canada, during which I put in a load of laundry and cleaned out my closet. The sullen woman on the line assured me I would get my passport in time for my trip, even though one of my references has moved to Antigua. Hooray!
The season has begun. We’re having an ice-cream van turf-war on our street. I have totally got the fever.
Oh, please do check out Patricia Storms’s Art Imitating Lit comic strips. In terms of good things that woman creates, Booklust is just le tippe de le iceberge.
February 13, 2007
Self Portrait
We’re tired at our house, which is what happens when we both spend the night having dreams in which we are struggling to sleep. And so for today, in lieu of coherence, Pickle Me This brings you me waiting for the tub to fill. Turban-headed because if my Japanese life taught me anything, it was that a bath sans shower is foul. And I like this image because it incorporates four of my favourite things: books, baths, big mugs of tea and Stuart (for it is his robe after all). Happy All The Time was a splish-splash delight.
Today in the post was a letter from Bronwyn, with whom I’ve defied Laurie Colwin’s quote from Happy All The Time: “Friendship is not possible between two women one of whom is very well dressed”. (That said woman is Bronwyn and not me should be revelatory to nobody). And her note contained the news that she has subscribed me to the London Review of Books, which is sort of like having pennies rain from the sky. I’d say life must be mostly good, with friends like that.
And I think Lucky Beans is one of the prettiest blogs I’ve ever seen.
February 1, 2007
Sites to see
The big news is that echolocation issue six is online and it’s beautiful. The launch is tomorrow night, Thursday, February 1st, 2007 8pm and thereafter at Labspace Studio, 276 Carlaw Ave., Suite 202. www.labspacestudio.com.
Also online, I’ve just found Jennica Harper’s website, where you can find out more about this fabulous poet/screenwriter/comedian/teacher/etc/etc.
And finally, we bring you every book Art Garfunkel has read since June 1968 (via 50 Books). The world has beeen waiting too long.
