June 23, 2006
Old Sport
I finished The Great Gatsby, and I’m not going to go into it because everything worth saying about it has been said, but it was a really great book and I think Fitzgerald is terribly underrated. Must admit to cheating a bit. The last two reads have been picked due to their brevity, because I’m a bit behind. Now reading The Turn of the Screw, inspired by this recent article. It is good. Like Gatsby, I read it for school and can’t remember much about it. It will be nice to have it fresh in my mind.
Everything’s been a bit buzzy the last twenty four hours, with good things. My birthday is on Saturday and already, fun has begun. Last night Curtis surprised me with a cake and an amazon gift cert, which were respectively eaten and exercised quite promptly. What a wonderful surprise! I was able to get two Hilary Mantels, the new PEN Book I mentioned yesteday, and Grace Paley’s Collected Stories, which I believe are an absolutely treasure and will be a pleasure to own. So that was brilliant. Moreoever, stuff has been popping up in the post all week and I have a not-unsubstantial pile of prez and cards. And so today, I woke up forty minutes early, thinking of my story, and so I got up and wrote, which was nice first thing. And when I walked to work this morning, men were planting trees in the park and everyone I passed looked beautiful. Midway through today, I got news about my advisor for next year, and it made me very very happy. Lovely surprise from Stuart tonight. And an old friend called, just because he was happy and needed someone to tell about it. Which is an honour as far as I’m concerned. Tomorrow is my birthday lunch at work and we’re going out for Chinese food.
This is my first birthday in Canada since 2001. Since then, I’ve birthdayed in Switzerland, England, Japan and England again, and it’s good to be home proper. (Though last year’s birthday did occur on my honeymoon and resulted in fab red wellington boots from my fab muminlaw, so it’s almost untoppable). We’re spending Saturday afternoon on Toronto Island, and by all accounts, the day promises great fun.
June 21, 2006
Recent Acquisitions
I forgot to list my recent acquisitions, especially from the Prince Edward County Library Branch book sale in Bloomfield, Ontario. Four paperbacks for a dollar. I got a copy of Starring Sally J Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume, which is one of my favourite books ever. I have owned a variety of copies but they always seem to go missing, so I intend to keep my mitts on this one. It’s a fabulous story; a children’s book that reads just as interestingly for an adult, and very differently. There is a lot of depth to it. It is also remarkably similar to Ann Marie McDonald’s The Way the Crow Flies, which I read around the same time. I also got As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, which I’ve never read, and two Anne Tyler novels. Further, my copy of The Walrus arrived in the mail yesterday. And I think I am going to purchase Writing Life: Celebrated Canadian and International Authors on Writing and Life, the new PEN Collection.
June 21, 2006
In the Skin of a Lion
I just finished rereading In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje. I read this book first in 1998 for school, and I enjoyed it very much. I am a bit disappointed in the rereading experience however, as the book lacked a certain solidity that I have come to appreciate in novels, and it was not completely compelling. Having the blanks filled in for me (unlike in my first read) did not make for a more interesting reading experience, I thought. And also, regrettably, I have been all over the place lately and this book did not receive all the attention it should have.
It’s a beautiful book though, and the story is interesting. It’s full of facts (though a bit too full at times?) and geography. It is unique, important, and astounding, and I still like it. I still loved the love story too, significantly. I have found that I approach love stories quite differently since growing up and actually being in love rather than unsimply longing for it, as in days of yore. I used to like romantic books and movies for vicarious reasons, but now that I like real life, a lot of romance bores me. The story of Patrick and Alice Gull was beautiful, however. But for a different reason than it used to be. (And it is charting these changes that is one of the most fabulous parts of this rereading experience).
There is a passage in this book beginning with “He had always wanted to know her when she was old…” and ending with the “Now there is a moat around her he will never cross again..” paragraph. I remember typing this part of the book out back in days of angst, and pasting it into some scrapbook. The depth of Patrick Lewis’s longing for Alice Gull was the most lovely thing I could imagine then, but now that I am older and life is different, this passage resonates with me for other reasons. It’s the loss, rather than the love, that affects me. To actually lose that person you wanted to be old with, which is everything I fear now, which is the knot of all my happiness. I loved the line later, “He has come across a love story. This is only a love story. He does not wish for plot and all its consequences. Let me stay in this field with Alice Gull….” which is the most perfect expression. Which represents how far I may have come from melodrama. Indeed, I read, let me stay in this field.
June 20, 2006
Goodbye my friend
I am very sad that Top of the Pops has been cancelled. It was one of my first British institutions- the first time I got drunk in England was while watching TOTP in 2002 (and then I fell asleep in my underpants). It also remained one of my favourites. Stu and I spent many a Friday night taking in TOTP pre-Eastenders, thumbs up-or-downing the UK Top Twenty before heading out for a night in the city centre. It was usually absolute rubbish, which didn’t mean, of course, that I loved it any less.
June 20, 2006
I've read the news of late
Lynn Crosbie on Archie Andrews’s 65th birthday. An interview with Ellen Seligman at M&S. Heather Mallick weighs in on a controversial Christie Blatchford piece a few weeks back. I think both bear reading. The Great Ayun Halliday on The Zine Life. On writing to writers. In praise of Hilary Mantel. Of Vera, Chuck and Dave. On The Kawaii Craze, which I have definitely bought into.
June 20, 2006
The Mini Break
Stuart and I have a remarkable ability to have hilarious fun in even the most desolate places. Luckily this weekend didn’t need to test our skills. We had a wonderful time without even trying. We started out on The Apple Route, beginning at The Big Apple in Colbourne, which I have been driving past most of my life, and never ventured into. It was so odd, but funny. First, it was the second “World’s Biggest” attraction we have been to, after The World’s Biggest Rice Paddle in Miyajima, Japan. Second, what do you see from the lookout atop the world’s largest apple? The answer is nothing, which is why numerous people have evidently felt the need to spontaneously urinate in frustration, which is why the top of The Big Apple smells like pee. Disappointing, perhaps. But I learned that apples came to Canada in the 17th century from somewhere near the Caspian Sea, we ate some delicious apple pie, bought an apple spoonrest from the World’s Biggest Gift Shop, saw some llamas, and then we were off again! We stopped in Brighton for lunch, to commemorate last year’s wonderful honeymoon in Brighton, UK. And Brighton Ontario was amusing. Tourist information was in the same building as The Beer Store, Adult Literacy Centre and the police. We had one of those incredible small town meals of a BLT and fries that tastes like nothing else and you can get everywhere. We went to the Memory Junction Railway Museum and saw a locomotive! And then we drove on again. We entered Prince Edward County and followed The Taste Trail over the next day or so, visiting wineries, cheese factories, jam makers, eating homemade ice cream, and gourmet hotdogs! It was great. We stayed at a lovely B&B, had a great meal out Saturday night, took in the gorgeous sights of Prince Edward County (truly a marvelous example of how a region can successfully market itself too- one of the best in-canada trips I’ve ever taken), and swam in Lake Ontario on Saturday, even though it was freezing. We definitely proved our Northern Stock. Stopped in Port Hope on the way home, where we stumbled upon a British tea room, just as I was longing for one ala the brilliant Mock Turtle in Brighton UK. This place wasn’t as good, but in Canada, I can’t complain. Cup of tea and a scone with jam. I was pleased. We arrived home last night exhausted and so happy, and well aware of what a wonderful country in which we live.
June 14, 2006
Year One
And Pickle Me This will be on holiday for the weekend, on account of our first wedding anniversary. It’s been a good year, with lots of luck and love. We’re hoping for sunshine.
June 14, 2006
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
I just finished If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor. It was a jumping off from The Hours, due to its moment by moment pacing. Stuart bought this book for me in 2003, so goes his message on the inside cover. And I believe I must have read it that April, as there was a bookmark from Paris inside and that was when we were there. I wanted to read it back then, because McGregor lived in Nottingham and it was quite hyped in the city. I liked it, but not as much as I had wanted to. I am a bit disappointed now, because things have been so busy this week, I’ve not had the time to devote this book that I wanted to give it. I think it would be best read in a sitting, because the connectivity in its rich fabric is best understood that way. It is a beautiful book in so many ways, but it has its own problems. McGregor is trying to do too many things, I think, and the result is a bit overwhelming and disquieting. There are about three hundred stories meshed here, which is part of McGregor’s whole point, but the result is less a novel than a sweep of grandiose proportions. Some of the situations were a bit implausible. But the sweep is worth it, and this is so clearly a first novel by somebody whose future novels are going to be even better. There is an amazing image of a man who bungee jumps and as he falls he sees a child hit by a car, and as he bounces back up and down, and hangs, he has to watch this, absolutely powerless but to witness. This book reminded me of Woolf’s “Modern Fiction”, and that McGregor is trying to do something altogether new here, and we have to credit him, problems and all.
