April 15, 2007
Home news
Big changes are a-coming around our house and it’s time to let the secret out: we’re expecting a new addition. This is the divide between our youth and adulthood, I suppose, and time for us to face up to our responsibilities, to begin to approach respectability. Never again, our salad days, but this change signifies a new era of possibility– aesthetically and ergonomically.
We bought a sofa. No more will our cheapest-in-the-shop futon be your sole option for asseyez-vousing when you come round. No longer will our apartment be outfitted like a college flat. A sofa: three seater, comfortable, classic. Our sofa: the most grown-up thing we’ve ever done.
And so the sofa was the point of yesterday. Luckily its purchase coincided with our need for a change of scenery, and we took the subway out to Main Street station to choose it. It is fortunate that Stuart and I have the exact same taste (good or bad, though he is less partial to tye-dye than I am) and so we picked it fast: exactly what we wanted. And then we walked the Danforth, all the way from Main Street to Chester to visit Erin-who-we-love. On the way we stopped off at the Chocolate Heaven Cafe (as heard on Metro Morning and as featured in the Globe last week).) We had dinner with Erin at Asteria Soulaki Place and it was the best Greek food we’ve ever had. Oishilicious. Today has moved at a slower pace, but highlights included She Said Boom for book purchases*, and Tealish to replenish our stock.
Book purchases: Happenstance by Carol Shields and Where I Was From by Joan Didion.
We are excited because tonight Curtis returns after two weeks of chaos in the United Kingdom. We are also excited because he might have brought us candy.
April 9, 2007
The perils of mimeograph
I am sure that I too once began essays with sweeping statements like “All societies since the dawn of time have had to struggle for identity, much in the same way that Canada struggles to define itself in Barometre Rising“. Therefore I will not roll my eyes too high. I will, however, take a quick break from marking to direct your attention toward two great pieces on personal expression and the internet.
Brilliant Globe and Mail columnist Ivor Tossell on the illusion of on-line privacy. The just-as-brilliant Heather Mallick takes the point further here. She writes of comments (moderated or otherwise) tacked onto articles in The Guardian (and the Globe has them too), asking: “Why should everyone have a voice? They don’t in daily life. There are some people you wouldn’t sit next to on the bus. Online, clever and perhaps sensitive letter writers with an actual point to make are driven away by the ignorance and sheer hatred displayed by the other posters.”
She’s right, for example check out the comments on Ivor’s article, like that charmer who says “rotten things online” just “to get everything thinking”. Thanks pal. Or the one who uses the term “techno weenie”. Oh my. If you judged our international IQ by the amount of rage expressed in these idiotic comments, I think that we could all be geniuses.
April 8, 2007
Woke up this morning feeling fine
Japan was in the news last week, mostly unfortunately through this murder which has been sensationalized by the red-tops in Britain. I appreciated measured responses to the hype here inThe Times. (Judging from reader comments, clearly not everyone appreciated the first article as much as I did. The venom it unleashed was sort of baffling, but then a lot of people don’t like to call racism by its name). More positively, Top Ten Books Set in Japan by Fiona Campbell who has just published Death of a Salaryman. (Incidentally, I’ve only read number 10 but plan to read Kitchen someday soon.)
Lionel Shriver happily reviews Nora Ephron. I want to read Julie Burchill’s book on Brighton. Rounding up responses to Didion on stage. This review makes me so excited to read the new McEwan. I love this: Sunday Morning Music.
Now rereading The Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble, for kicks.
I’ve marked thirty essays, and as I’ve only done four and three today and yesterday, the weekend has contained some aspects of nice. Yesterday we partook in lattes over the paper in Kensington, and today we ate our delightful M&S Easter Treats from England. But otherwise, yes, not much has occurred. Life continues on hold. The notable event of the weekend continues to be that I brought a very large object into our home, oh and mustn’t forget the startling revelation (to the sound of Herman’s Hermits) that I dance like my dad.
April 1, 2007
Long live Skegness
Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood is another book I missed the point of as a teenager, and Jeanette Winterson’s celebration inspires me to read it again. Ian McEwan profiled in The Globe, and reviewed (favourably!) in The Guardian. Lionel Shriver is reviewed less favourably, and though I take the reviewer’s points about the troublesome language, I think she misses the nuances of the story. Further, this is a reviewer who disliked Shriver’s last book and seems to be unaware of the six preceding it. I don’t know if that is altogether fair. And though a subscription is required to read this article online, I did enjoy it in my print edition. How Britons don’t appreciate their “crap towns”, and a wee celebration of the British seaside. Long live Skegness.
March 26, 2007
Gleaned
A wonderful interview with Joan Didion as her book goes on stage. On that difficult first novel. An extract from the new Ian McEwan. Jane Austen gets a makeover— and reaction.
March 23, 2007
My non-response and my endorsement
I’m not going to respond to Orange Prize hoopla again, because I still feel the same way I felt last year and the year before. This year let me just say that I like anything that promotes good books, and as good books by women tend to be my favourite kinds, this list is usually the one I like best. The longlist is a brilliant selection of books to be read and three I’ve read already that wholly deserve to be included.
I’ve read Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngochie Adichie, Alligator by Lisa Moore, and Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert. Each was extraordinary in its own way, I loved the first and third the best, and I am totally putting my bets on Adichie. If the right people her book, I think it could change the world.
March 13, 2007
On time
Alan Lightman won my heart with this article recommending books on “the mysterious nature of time”. He’s mixing up the fic and nonfic, suggesting Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity, and The Seven Day Circle by Eviatar Zerubavel. Apart from the good picks, I learned a whole lot about time from Lightman’s article itself.
March 6, 2007
Poor Scoot
Brilliant! Nora Ephron profiled in The Guardian. Kundera on the art of the novel. Deanna McFadden writes around town— with an interview with Ben McNally. Beryl Bainbridge on writing. Martin Levin on book lists, and more here.
I will speculate about why we love them– lists in general, I mean. They give the illusion of containment and control, and for a brief instant, all is manageable. The universe is catalogueable, navigable. To-do lists particularly illustrate the power we grant words; if it is written, it will get done. Book lists provide our sprawling to-be-read piles with an armature, and this is assuring. We don’t need to do anything with lists though, really. Their very existence is their object, and beyond that they are scrap. Therefore, no one needs to worry Sirs. List away and live free.
Middlemarch continues. I had to trade in my copy for another, however, as the small print was making me go blind.
And you do have to worry about a grown man called Scooter. Unless, of course, he is a muppet.
Short short story contest here in The Guardian. Fun.
March 2, 2007
The Myth of Justice
A recent overdose of Decca had a detrimental effect on last night’s sleep. I’ve never dreamt in letters before. To do so is rather maddening. I’m starting Middlemarch today; Bronwyn’s reading it too.
The Guardian World Literature Tour in New Zealand: fascinating to read the discussion in comparison to Canada’s which turned in to an all-out internecine CanLit hatefest. Here for literacy initiatives. The usual suspects for Britain’s favourite books. Here for Granta‘s best American novelists.
Our beloved Curtis’s birthday plans were waylaid last night due to a ferocious winter storm. An emergency birthday party was thrown together with some success. Cake was devoured. Excellent. Bonne fête.
February 26, 2007
The Worthwhile Quest
Jacqueline Wilson on her own story. My favourite BBC Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman profiled. Loved this response to this book hate-on from a couple weeks back. (My response on the blog was: “Hating books and authors is a waste of time. The books I don’t like don’t suit my tastes, but this doesn’t mean those books are crap. I like Zadie Smith and evidently others don’t. I don’t understand why this is a point of contention.” I still don’t.)
And how about The Library at Night. Can I just read you the beginning?
“Outside theology and fantastic literature, few can doubt that the main features of our universe are its dearth in meaning and lack of discernible purpose. And yet, with bewildering optimism, we continue to assemble whatever scraps of information we can gather in scrolls and books and computer chips, on shelf after library shelf, whether material, virtual or otherwise, pathetically intent on lending the world a semblance of sense and order, while knowing perfectly well that, however much we’d like to believe the contrary, our pursuits are sadly doomed to failure.
“Why then do we do it? Though I knew from the start that the question would most likely remain unanswered, the quest seemed worthwhile for its own sake. This book is the story of that quest.”
