December 30, 2008
Christmas update
I received a Slanket for Christmas, after years and years of longing, and so I will never have to suffer the agony of cold arms again while reading. It really is the most remarkable bookish accessory, the only problem being that whenever it’s on me I very soon find myself falling asleep. But it did keep me snug as I make my way through my Christmas books. Already did the trick with Lush Life, and I’m sure there’ll be more of the same as I read Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories About Childbirth. I also received Inside the Slidy Diner by Laurel Snyder and Jaime Zollars for me and my yet-born babe, and I bought the baby Night Cars, which I think it really liked. Our beloved Smiths gave us each a book by Todd Parr— The Mommy Book and The Daddy Book. (We now wonder if it might be safe to be prepared, knowing where this kid comes from, and buy it an early copy of Parr’s It’s Okay to be Different). Oh, and we also got us a copy of Pulpy and Midge in our house via a present for Stuart, which meant I was startled in bed the other night as we were reading by Stuart exclaiming in woebegone tones, “Oh no! Pulpy just fell on his potluck contribution!!”
December 30, 2008
Two Odd Things
1) It is strange but true that I’ve been craving sweet foods much less since I got pregnant. Which is part of the reason I never really got around to Christmas Baking mania this year. I baked apple pie for Christmas dinner, and gingerbread cookies two weeks ago– but only half a batch. And I kept meaning to bake at least half a batch of sugar cookies too, for though I’ve been craving sweet foods less, usually I can rouse myself enough to eat them. I’d even found the perfect sugar cookie recipe, simple and easy, as the one I’d been using the last couple of years has always caused me trouble. I’m not sure if I found it on the internet or in a magazine, but I do remember the recipe was printed against a blue background, and the recipe below was a chocolate variant of the same.
Except that I actually think I dreamt it, because when I got (nearly) down to getting those cookies baked, I couldn’t find my perfect recipe anywhere. Not in any magazines, or on websites I frequent, and I spent quite a bit of timing just searching, searching, all of it coming up naught. So that was disappointing.
2) Less disappointingly, however, is that I’ve located my grade three teacher. You might recall, as I’ve written about this before, that she wrote me a letter well over a year ago, after reading my story in The Toronto Star. And that she had been that teacher, the one who first encouraged me to write, to want to be a writer. All very good news, except that she’d sent the letter to my dad’s house, where the filing system is a bit dubious, and somehow the envelope had gotten lost, and with it her return address. Efforts to locate her via internet searches came to absolutely nothing, and I wasn’t even sure in what part of the province she lived.
However this summer whilst weekending at our friends’ cottage north of Belleville, the power went out in a gusty storm. Staying out for nearly twenty-fours, which halfway into we decided to alert the Hydro company of. Because perhaps they didn’t know, however unlikely? And then flipping through the phone-book by candlelight (and keep in mind this is a small phone book with a very large font), a name jumps out at me, and I swear it’s my former teacher’s husband’s. An address written beside it, and of course I’m not sure, but I decide to take my chances. The address being not quite right postal-wise, however, and so the note I send takes its time, but it arrives eventually. So my teacher and I are back in touch, I was able to thank her for her lovely note about my story, and all this only because of a terrible storm that knocked out the power last July.
December 23, 2008
Holidays
I’m now on my holidays, so expect to get plenty of reading done over the next two weeks. I just finished reading Penelope Lively’s memoir Oleander, Jacaranda about her childhood in Egypt. More than a memoir, actually, it is an investigation into the dawning of consciousness ala Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood. I enjoyed it immensely, and not only for its endpapers. Now just beginning Rainforest by Jenny Diski, and The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer. Now enjoying the lights on the zmas tree, one blizzard after another, and the ache of my muscles after this afternoon’s swim.
December 17, 2008
Thinking in circles, about big and small presses
As you might have been able to tell by my waffling tone, I was not altogether comfortable with my “Top Eleven Indie Picks of 2008”. Not with the books themselves, for the books are very good, but with the very fact that I made such a list at all. As though the books by independent publishers that I’d read this year were a sideshow, “a subspecies”, or do I even dare to say it, a ghetto? Because I don’t mean to imply any of these things. No, I don’t mean that at all.
The problem is this, I think. That my original Top Eleven Picks of 2008 was assembled in very vague terms. These were most certainly not “The Best Books of 2008”, but rather a list of the ones I liked best, and I am conscious enough know that what I like best and what is the best is not necessarily the very same thing. Particularly because I’m the sort to fall in love with a book because it contains a teapot, or references the postal system, and these are two of my favourite things.
I like fiction that innovates, I like books that challenge what I feel or believe, I admire a book that attacks me like a pipe to the head, but I’ve just got this thing about books I can curl up inside like a warm blanket. Or books that recreate the world and let me walk around easy in it, as opposed to one that makes a whole new world that I’ve got to think a lot to discover. Perhaps if I didn’t read corporate documents for eights hours every day, this would be different, but at the moment I like a book that grabs me and holds me, and even pushes me along. (If I only read books like this I would be in a coma, but I do require them on a regular basis.)
Which is to say that many (but certainly not all) of my Top Eleven books were old fashioned good reads, which is mostly what I talk about here at Pickle Me This. They may not have rewritten the book on how to write the book (though I’ll argue for a few) but I loved them true, and that was sort of my sole requirement.
But I did so enjoy my year of more intensive reading of independent publishers, and when I reflected that I’d missed them in my picks, I was more than a bit regretful. But I was hardly going to just slot them in between the lines, and hope that nobody noticed. I loved these books for different reasons than I loved the others, and it wasn’t so much that they couldn’t play with the big boys, but rather they were playing a whole other game. Which, of course, is as dubious a statement as any other– there is certainly nothing decidedly “Indie” to link each of these eleven books, but I couldn’t help but think of them differently. Why? I’m not sure.
But I am not sure I’m totally wrong about this– I’m still not comfortable, but I can’t help but acknowledge a difference between fiction from big publishers and small ones. Just like how, try as I might otherwise, I read a difference between fiction written by men and that by women (for example). Always, always, there will be exceptions (I’m waving at you, Ian McEwan!), but I am thinking in general terms. I am thinking of the Orange Prize, and how instead of a ghetto, I see it as a celebration of something uniquely itself. Similar with the small presses then, instead of just a sideshow, although to imply that small press books couldn’t make it on my main list is definitely offensive, and I see that now. Further, that these books were as good as they were but didn’t get on my list is making me reconsider how I evaluate what I read.
Anyway, I expect to make full sense of this around the same time I finally read Anna Karenina. So probably don’t hold your breath.
December 3, 2008
Now
Now reading The Paris Reviews vol. 1, Wally Lamb’s new novel The Hour I First Believed, and Ina-May’s Guide to Childbirth. Now looking forward to going to bed, though I am currently enjoying listening to my husband singing along to The Stone Roses downstairs.
November 6, 2008
Plan Zafoot
There is so much going on right now that it’s really quite remarkable. That a while ago I was having weekends whose highlight was the purchase of track pants, but days lately have been a bit more whirlwindy. Exciting projects on the go, new beginnings on the horizon, and so many unbelievably amazing things coming up. Ok, not *so* many that I can’t count them all on the fingers of one hand, but I assure you I’m using the whole hand. It never rains but it pours, in particular pouring five fabulous things. And slowly but surely, all will be revealed.
October 16, 2008
Oh, but do forgive?
Oh, but do forgive my slow progress in coming back to life. I spent a good week in a magical land, and since returning home I’ve been everywhere and nowhere, and often not where I am supposed to be. Getting over a cold, very tired, excuses, etc. blah blah, previous Liberal government– you know how it is. More interestingly, check out a special IFOA Readers Reading at Seen Reading this week. And I aim to be more interesting soon.
July 19, 2008
A return to order
Returning my books to their freshly painted shelves last evening was as satisfying as popping bubble wrap, or tweezing out an ingrown hair. I’d had to resist the urge to get it all done earlier, before the paint was surely dry, exercising my sorely underused sensibility muscle. Telling myself over and over, it is hot and humid, shelves could be sticky, books could get stuck= disaster. But it’s finished now, books are home. The room is fresh and bright, and the built-in shelves are no longer dingy grey. Though we do have a unique problem here of too many shelves, and the collection looks piddly. But still lovely, standing at attention and alphabetized for your pleasure…
July 16, 2008
Chaos Continues
Bibliochaos continues– the house is in shambles, and I’m covered in paint. Luckily so are the bookshelves (paint-covered, that is), and they’ll get a second coat tomorrow, and it’s not so unreasonable to assume things will be back to normal by Thursday. Meaning that I will be able to find time to post a rave review of Marilyn Robinson’s Home, among other things. I’ve just finished rereading Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays— I read it wrong the first time, and am glad I came back to find out just how wonderful it is.
July 8, 2008
Fits and starts
It’s been a strange day, and I’ve got stitches in my mouth. I’m also a bit doped up, and all of it has been sort of fascinating, however awful. That I’ve been bored, all afternoon. And I am never bored. I firmly believe that boredom is the jurisdiction of the lazy (or of those who forget to carry at book at all times). But this afternoon I’ve not been able to concentrate on very much, save the daring feats of squirrels outside my window, crossing and crisscrossing the street via tightrope power lines. That I’ve been unable to read very much at all, can you believe it. I was reading Marilynne Robinson before, but she requires more attention and care from her readers than I have energy to offer her now. I did listen to the podcast of Lorrie Moore reading her story “Paper Losses”, which is sort of wonderful, actually, as I can’t think of any other day in which I would have cleared the space. In fits and starts, I’ve been rereading Justine Picardie’s If the Spirit Moves You, which is just the ticket, I think, for my current state of mind. I also read another story today, which I hated– the danger of linking books and experience– mainly because I was taking out upon it my “mild discomfort”. But I’m also sure it sort of sucked. And the story will therefore remind me of excruciating pain as I long as I shall live.
I am turning my evening over to the benevolent force of the DVD.
