June 14, 2006
The Fun Continues
I wish we could keep them. The fun has been non-stop since their arrival, and they’ve been wonderful. Currently, my house is full of the fine smells of dinner being cooked for us ala Nippon. We’ve been taking photos galore, of plates in particular. Last night was fun in Little Italy with Curtis too, amidst the Brazilian revelry and home for a bit of Yukata dress-up.
June 12, 2006
tako-yaki mambo
Life has been unbookish this weekend, though it was decidedly newspaperish when my houseguests missed their plane and I spent all of Saturday afternoon at the airport, waiting for them on the next flight. But when Miyuki and Yumi finally arrived, we came back downtown and had great barbeque and hilarious fun with wonderful friends. Today, we went to Korea Town and they revelled in Asian groceries (after three months living in Regina). I remember how exciting it was to find a can of Campbell’s Soup in Kobe, and it seems they feel the same about tako-yaki in Toronto. Then we went out for their first sushi in months, and it didn’t disappoint. We walked down to Chinatown after, and I took their picture beside the Osaka Hair Salon. We went to the Japanese grocery store on Queen Street, and then went out to St. Lawrence Market, where there was a dog festival and our canine-loving friends found themselves in heaven. Stopped for a drink on a patio and watched inebriation ensue from half a bottle of Corona. By this point, I was terrifically sunburned and redder than the drunk girl. We came home to a wonderful supper of homemade pizza and now we’re tired. And I have to go back to work tomorrow. But they are talking the bus to Niagara Falls! They are the most hilarious houseguests ever ever ever.
June 9, 2006
The Hours
The worst thing about finishing The Hours by Michael Cunningham on a break at work today was that I was expected to return to my desk and function afterwards. How? So yes, my latest reread. First read starting July 2, 2001, which was the summer I worked with Bronwyn and we spent our lunch hours at bookstores on Front Street and King Street and I purchased a motherlode of books. Sadly, nothing was found inside it. I remember enjoying it the first time, but of course there was a lot I didn’t pick up on. This is apparent, days after finishing Mrs. Dalloway of course, which though not essential to enjoy The Hours, does make for a completely different reading experience. Also, having read Woolf’s essay “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”, which seemed as essential to The Hours as Mrs. Dalloway is, though this wasn’t completely clear to me until the very end. Of course the last line of Mrs. Dalloway is very important, and I had to read the last line of The Hours (“Come in, Mrs, Brown,” she says. “Everything’s ready.”) twice before I got the reference and then the entire book grew exponentially. The Hours is a feat, I think. Something so complicated could have been done very badly. I love how asymmetrical the parallels are between Mrs. Dalloway and this book. Cunningham has reworked Mrs. Dalloway in such intriguing and surprising ways. But he’s also made a book that stands up on its own, and I think that is really fantastic.
June 9, 2006
In the morning
I can’t help but wonder what future generations will think of this “civilization” of ours, in which we so revel in close-ups of corpses plastered to our periodical fronts.
Nevertheless, on schlurpy book dedications, and what happens to the book once the schlurp is no more. Here for the new Guardian Poetry Workshop. From Maud Newton we discover Field Tested Books, celebrating “a certain book in a certain place”.
Now, we’ve got a party to attend, and houseguests in the morning.
June 8, 2006
Mrs. Dalloway
I just finished re-reading Mrs Dalloway. I started it last on May 17 2000 (which I only know because I wrote the date inside the cover) and there were no found objects inside, but on Pg 59 I had written “Your prism grasp” in red ink, which was a piece of a poem I once had. I have a recollection of having read part of this book on Toronto Island, but I could just be making that up. And when I read this book then, six years ago, I found it extremely hard going. I read it because it was Mrs Dalloway, so of course I was supposed to read it, but I must confess to not having enjoyed it. I had read To the Lighthouse previously, in fact I studied it in classes for three of my four years at university, and I appreciated that book, but tackling Mrs. Dalloway on my own was perhaps too ambitious. (This is very embarrassing, but the truth). The text was so dense and wobbly, full of twists and turns and I didn’t concentrate enough to follow. I didn’t really get it, to be frank. So I can say that I had read Mrs. Dalloway, to the extent that I had turned the pages to the end, but I was hardly captured. This time was different. First, in my course “Virginia Woolf: Essays and Short Fiction”, I learned how to read Woolf, for I feel there is a knack required for it. I’ve become more familiar with Woolf’s own concerns, socially and aesthetically, which does have a bearing on this work. And of course, because I am re-reading, I am reading far more carefully than I usually do, already aware of the ending so not needing to charge through to uncover it. Attentive enough to follow all the twists and turns, but oh the prize you get for doing just that! Mrs. Dalloway is a love song to London, a story about being, about getting old and who you love. The entire spectrum of human experience, caught- if that could be thought possible. This, my friends, is a book.
June 7, 2006
Further
My new Taddle Creek arrived yesterday and it’s really wonderful. There is really nothing so delightful as reading material in the post. Here for the top ten passionate women authors. And here for the Toronto Book Awards. Now re-reading Mrs. Dalloway, and it’s enthralling, as I will be reporting here soon.
June 6, 2006
Imagine if..
CSI Miami met Eastenders? If Horatio Caine had a showdown with Phil Mitchell in Albert Square? Oh how positively delicious to fathom. I can now sort of almost understand a bit why one would write fan fiction. Kind of.
June 6, 2006
Orangey Range
The wonderful Zadie Smith wins the Orange Prize for the very wonderful On Beauty.
UPDATE: And they’re making a movie about last year’s winner, the stunning We Need to Talk About Kevin.
June 4, 2006
The Robber Bride
I just reread my first book. I finished The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood, which I read in 1994 and liked. Significantly, I found a one dollar and a two dollar bill inside it, as well as a bookmark from Victoria College. And so, when I last read this book I was fifteen, and I suspect just awed by a window into the weird and sordid world of adulthood. This time around, I caught the more subtle details and was able to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each of the characters, and that Zenia was one hundred percent pure evil. It’s difficult, when you are younger, to evaluate characters like that. Good or evil, twenty-six or sixty-two, they were all sort of the same. They were Women!. I got more of a sense of the greater themes of the work, the significance of war in particular. The book started off slow for me but once I got into the backstories, I was hooked. An excellently constructed narrative. I enjoyed it very much.
June 4, 2006
The Ideal Occupation
Of note, I made a brilliant salad for dinner with feta, watermelon and pumpkin seeds. We were dubious, but it turned out to be a taste explosion. Oishi desu! Also, I bought a new CD today for the first time in ages. I bought the new Zero 7 album, and it’s wonderful wonderful good. I bought their “Simple Things” back when we lived in England, and it’s one of the few albums we play absolutely regularly. Their new CD “the garden” has met all my expectations and then some. It’s different from “Simple Things”, a little less chilled out, with more a sense of humour. They’re a collective and listening to their stuff is like listening to a variety show, especially with the new album. It got a fairly favourable review in The Globe yesterday, though they didn’t like it as much as I do.
I spent a wonderful day with two of my oldest and dearest friends today, cruising a rainsoaked Queen Street. Consumerism will be the death of me. Lately I’ve been mad about cake stands. And I am obsessed with pickled beetroot.
I’ve enjoyed reading about the Book a Day Challenge in the Globe, and particularly appreciated John Allemang’s reflections of his endeavour at one hundred books. Though no book-a-dayer myself, I did embark upon my own reading marathon this year. Initially, I just wanted to keep a list of my reading, which was inspired by Annie Dillard’s own “Books I’ve Read Since 1966”. However quantifying my reading got me ambitious. I decided to read 200 books this year, though it looks like I will only get to about 160. (Full time work interferes with my leisure time in a way I never thought was possible). I’m currently reading my 71st book, and it’s been a bit of a ride (as much as reading can be considered a ride. I need to get out more). I particularly liked these lines from Allemang’s article:
Now, I have to admit that if you devote yourself wholeheartedly to reading, an occupation that was held up as an ideal when I was at school, you end up losing contact with humanity — but only the living and breathing version. There isn’t a day when I don’t feel immersed in the world, reading about the search for a lost Caravaggio in the wilds of Italy, or the desperate struggles of the Impressionists in Paris, or what it was like to grow up in backwoods Texas, or do battle in Algiers, or be Catherine Deneuve.
and
My interpersonal skills, a bit dubious at the best of times, have certainly not improved. The general verdict around the house is that while the gentle art of reading has calmed the road-rage side of my temper, it’s given me a lot less to say in response to the question, “So how was your day?” Of course we readers find that sort of thing a little too banal anyway. After you’ve read Intuition, Allegra Goodman’s novel about the inner workings of a cancer-research lab, small talk seems even smaller — and not many table companions want to hear about John Daly’s four wives.
Ivor Tossell wrote a great article on MySpace (the ugliest thing to ever happen to The Internet). I enjoyed The Missionary Position in The Nation, by Laila Lalami of Moorish Girl, a Muslim woman on Muslim women. Another marathon reader, Jane Smiley in The Observer.
