August 9, 2006
Unless and The Fire Dwellers
This weekend I read my definitive favourite book, Unless by Carol Shields, as well as The Fire Dwellers, which was always my favourite Margaret Laurence novel. Although written about thirty years apart, these two books are so companionable, which I never would have noticed had I not read one right after the other. Both novels are mired in domesticity, wife and motherhood, and elaborate such clear truths. Though Laurence’s novel isn’t first person, Stacey’s voice is used throughout, and its wry tone is so similar to Reta’s. They both depict a mother’s ambivalence toward her children to a point, and then such a fierce and primal love. Though both are clearly feminist texts, yet there is a certain ambiguity that makes these stories real. I loved both of them. And particularly Unless, as usual. I absolutely adore Carol Shields’ ability to paint a happy marriage, and for that and other reasons, this book gives me faith.
August 4, 2006
Behind the scenes
The best part about rereading Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum was a textual treasure unearthed. “Albert collected good days the way other people collected coins, or sets of postcards.” I love that idea, and for ages, I have been trying to remember where it came from. What a surprise when it fell right into my lap! I read this book last May, while we were living in England, more specifically during the week I spent in London. I think Bronwyn had signed it out of the library for me to read. I stayed with her and Alex that week, and Stu came down for the last few days. It was a week most notable because I was shopping for my wedding dress, and I spent all my spare moments scrambling to finish this book. It was a perfect candidate for a reread because I’d read it too quickly the first time, and also because the book has an element of mystery that is not made clear until the end, and so to read it mystery-solved is a completely different experience. It’s a bit spooky really. I loved this book when I first read it, but I think I liked it even better this time. Atkinson’s narrative will absolutely blow your mind.
Today was spent shopping for a black dress, which is much more difficult than one might expect. The sole highlight of that experience was Stuart and I being shouted at and kicked out of The Big and Tall Shop in Sears, after I tried on a golf shirt that reached my mid-calves and Stuart had found a pair of pants that were taller than he is. Laughter was dissolved into, as might be expected.
August 2, 2006
Catching a ride on the coattails of lit
I think that my favourite part of Writing Life was in Elizabeth Hay’s essay- “I live in a house full of books. I pull down one I love and read a page or two and invariably I’m absorbed and stirred and reaching for my pen. What I’m doing is catching a ride on the coattails of literature”. Beautiful. Today I bought The Atlantic Fiction Issue and I plan to enjoy it. Here for books that make you want to flirt with a stranger.
I’ve been thinking a lot about decisiveness. The Prime Minister has also been preoccupied with decisiveness lately. I guess sometimes I am decisive, just like he is. For example, I am decisive about the tragedy of people dying and the futility of war. But mostly, I am wary of decisiveness as a tool for dealing with complicated things, like, you know, people. And the world.
July 31, 2006
Longing
Oh, Great Summer Rereading Project, you have done me such good. But oh am I counting down to September, when I can delve into the two Hilary Mantel novels sitting on my bookshelf. I am finding Under the Volcano hardgoing. But I rather cheekily bought Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson on the weekend, just so I will be able to get my British lady novelist fix next. I read it early last summer, and it was brilliant. It’s nice to own it!
July 27, 2006
Remarkably Busy
I have suddenly found myself remarkably busy, and I don’t know why or how. But I have been writing, and reading. Just finished the wonderful White Teeth, which I didn’t appreciate enough when I first read it during the summer of 2001. Like many other books, I think its Englishness would have been lost on me then, and I don’t know if I would have had the patience for its detail. I liked it though, but I remembered next to nothing about it upon reading a second time. Which basically meant that I got to read it for the first time all over again, but with a better eye, and I loved it. What a feat, and no wonder Smith struggled with her second book, because this book is pretty much untoppable. It was funny, smart and fact-filled. White Teeth is Zadie Smith’s masterpiece, and she really could just put her feet up and watch TV now, if she wanted to. Though she’s better than that, but she could.
I read Lives of Girls and Women before that, and I didn’t love it. I haven’t read Alice Munro in years and so can’t compare it to her other work, but I got the impression that Lives was hammered together as a novel, and it didn’t function well in that respect. I was bored by the end. Each of the stories were strong on their own, but as a collection, this book was not devourable, which to me does not a novel make.
Yesterday’s Facts and Arguments essay on living abroad with a Canadian passport was a terrifically poignant response to all the murmurings going on about evacuations from Lebanon.
July 25, 2006
Hey, that's my (husband's) bike!
To the thief, then. Yeah, you with the wire clippers in the back pocket of your skinny jeans. All right then, take the bike. Steal it right off the porch with a guile I cannot fathom. I just hope you ride it under the wheels of a speeding bus. And you just keep on stealing bikes, again and again, rendering our porches eternally barren. But you will never manage to steal the bikes that live in our hearts; our inner bikes. The truest bikes, which you, of course you dirty bastard, will never ever know.
(Bonus points to whoever got my Reality Bites reference.)
July 22, 2006
Bookish News
Glee! Margaret Drabble’s new novel gets a great review in The Guardian. It comes out in Britain in August. Tragically, it’s not out in Canada until October. But I’ll be ok. On reading the right books in the right places. On how the middle class is letting down the public library.
July 20, 2006
Rainbow Styley
Listening to BBC Radio 1 every day has reawakened me to pop music, and I’m on quite a musical bent at the moment. I just bought “Let’s Get Out of This Country” by Camera Obscura, and I continue to adore my last purchase, “The Garden” by Zero 7. In terms of singles, I love Happiness by Orson, Eleanor Put Your Boots On by Franz Ferdinand, All This Love by the Similou, America by Razorlight and Fill My Little World by The Feeling. Oh and the Paris Hilton single. Really.
Just cycled home from Ward’s Island, where we were guests at a house party. How lucky is that? It’s a beautiful evening.
July 17, 2006
On Watermelon
The website of the evening is www.watermelon.org– the online home of the National Watermelon Promotion Board. We are now devouring watermelon smoothies. And obviously, we are now quite happy.
I got In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction from the library today. I am approaching it for a few reasons; the first is that Annie Dillard wrote the intro entitled “Notes for Young Writers”. Some of the best advice I’ve ever read, pointed and concise enough to be manageable. I like “Read for pleasure… Push it a little, but don’t read something totally alien to your nature and then say, “I’ll never be able to write like that.” Of course you won’t. Read books you’d like to write. If you want to write literature, read literature. Write books you’d like to read. Follow your own weirdness.” I’d recommend thumbing through this book even just for this. The book itelf I might not even read, but I am going to give it a try. It will be interesting to compare it to the anthology I read last week, wherein my complaint was of the forced nature of the pieces. This anthology, on the other hand, was compiled after the fact, and it will be interesting to see if this makes a difference. I am also interested in Creative Nonfiction, and confess a bit to not really knowing what it is, and so it will be nice to learn.
And yes, the book came from the library; I am absolutely obsessed with the Toronto Public Library. In the town where I grew up, the library was underfunded, seemed to be closed four days a week and only open until 3:30 when it was at all, and was fundamentally unwelcoming. In years since, I’ve revelled in university libraries, which definitely have their good points but are overwhelming in their austerity. And then there is the library around the corner from my house, which has the ugliest carpet known to man and plenty of Catherine Cookson, but some really great works scattered about, is open late, has nice staff and I can request any book from the Toronto Public Library system be delivered there just for me! I was stupified to learn that such a process was even possible. I feel quite lucky to be able to benefit from it.
Via Bookninja, I read Misery Loves a Memoir: “Contemporary memoirists have taught us mostly how to survive. They haven’t begun to teach us how to live.” I am currently listening to a great podcast, Zadie Smith on On Beauty. She is a brilliant speaker, in terms of how she sounds and what she says.
