August 8, 2010
Not glad to get home at all
Interestingly, this last week of going along, listening to all the things we couldn’t hear and not bothering turned out to be quite monumental. During our escape to the wilds of The Kawarthas, Harriet learned to walk, learned to dance, and made her first friend, who was called Izzy and is two. (Harriet has other friends, but I have for the most part projected these friendships upon her, whereas Izzy was friended independently. Harriet was totally in love, they hugged each other good-bye at the end of the week.)
Stuart and I spent a week without the internet, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, in particular our games of Scrabble on the porch in the evenings. We were both unsurprised to come home and discover we’d missed not much at all while we were away.
And to my great benefit, Stuart started reading Stieg Larsson en vacance, which meant that for a few days my husband loved reading just as much as I did. This was how I managed to get almost five books read during Harriet’s naptimes (which were made expansive by her running around like a wild animal when out of doors, and thus becoming exhausted). It also led to some book-buying adventures, which I’ll be recounting here in coming days.
It was a wonderful week, everything we wanted and needed, and also full of corn-on-the-cob and fresh peach pie. And no matter how often we swept the floor, there was sand underfoot, and there was sand in the shower, and on the table, and finally throughout the bed, so we were glad to get home and lose the grit. But other than that I really don’t think we were so glad to get home at all.
August 8, 2010
From what I read over the past week
Another literary lost umbrella(!), this time in Barbara Pym’s thoroughly enjoyable A Few Green Leaves: “It was not until she had gone too far along the street to turn back that Emma realised that, possibly in the stress of some obscure emotion, she must have taken Claudia’s umbrella in mistake for her own. And it was an umbrella of inferior quality. She wondered what the possible significance of that could be.”**
(**Update: Upon reading Pym’s autobiography, I learned this was based on an actual incident reported in her notebook, which, I think, constitutes *another* literary lost umbrella)
And then I fell into At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman, my one complaint about being that its lovely cover got a bit manky when I used it to kill a mosquito. “One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights– which in Emerson’s case expired long ago– a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer. The greater the work, the wider the ownership, which is why there are such things as criticism, revisionism and Ph.D. dissertations. I will not ask the sage of Concord to rewrite his oration. He will forever retain the right to speak his own words and to mean what he wished to mean, not what I would wish him to mean. But I will retain the right to recast Man Thinking in my mind as Curious People Thinking because time has passed and the tent has grown larger.”
Then I turned to Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone (except that my copy is called Thank You All Very Much, which was the title of a film upon which The Millstone was based). “I was not of course treated to that phrase which greets all reluctant married mothers, “I bet you wouldn’t be without her now, so often repeated after the event in the full confidence of nature, because I suppose people feared I might turn on them and say, Yes I certainly would, which would be mutually distressing for questioner and me. And in many ways I thought that I certainly would prefer to be without her, as one might prefer to lack beauty or intelligence or riches, or any other such sources of mixed blessing and pain. Things about life with a baby drove me into frenzies of weeping several times a week, and not only having milk on my clean jerseys. As so often in life, it was impossible to choose, even theoretically, between advantage and disadvantage, between profit and loss: I was up quite unmistakably against No Choice. So the best one could do was put a good face on it, and to avoid adding to the large and largely discussed number of sad warnings that abounded in the part of the world that I knew.”
Next was Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind, which was beautiful and difficult, and uncannily channelling Joan Didion in spots. “‘Blackness’, as [Zora Neale Hurston] understood it and wrote about it, is as natural and inevitable and complete to her as, say, “Frenchness” is to Flaubert. It is also as complicated, as full of blessings and curses. One can be no more removed from it than from one’s arm, but it is no more the total measure of one’s being than an arm is.”
And finally, Darwin’s Bastards, which I’m not finished yet, but how (in particular), I’ve loved short stories by Jessica Grant, Douglas Coupland, Mark Anthony Jarman, Timothy Taylor, and Elyse Friedman.
Such fun. Honestly, my vacation books could not have been more perfectly chosen.
July 27, 2010
Books I am taking away
All right, I have settled on the books I am taking away with me next week on vacation, none of which I’m reading for any reason except for pleasure (hooray!). And yes, I am being too optimistic with the amount of reading I expect to get done (because there will be swimming, and canoeing, and Scrabble, and… no other distractions. Oh, except Harriet). But can you imagine if I happened to get through all the books, and there was nothing next to turn to?
I am taking The Millstone by Margaret Drabble, because I love the Drabble and reread one of hers every summer, and have chosen to reread this one because someone loved its literary baby. And to read for the first time, Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith, A Few Green Leaves by Barbara Pym, Darwin’s Bastards by Zsuszi Gartner (ed), and At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman.
April 13, 2010
Mini-Break fun.
Harriet was extremely wary of her first Muskoka Chair
Because we’re a family that thrives on extravagance, we’ve started a tradition wherein we book one single night at a very nice resort during the off-season and live it up for about twenty-four hours. (Check out the photo from last year’s mini-break to see what was sitting on the chair then instead of a baby). It was a little different this year with Harriet in tow– she couldn’t get enough of the swimming pool (because she is our child, after all), but dinner was take-out on the floor in our room rather than hours spent lingering over delicious food on plates with elaborate coulis designs. Once Harriet was stowed away asleep in the pack n’ play, however, Stuart and I were able to indulge in copious episodes of Mad Men season two (and have I mentioned here how much I love that show? Season One took a while to win me over to the show’s intelligence, though maybe the LRB review had made me prejudiced, but now I’m totally enthralled and intrigued…) And then reading in bed. Could a night be any more perfect? Capped off the next morning by brunch with a chocolate fountain– the stuff of dreams. It was a beautiful drive back to the city the next day, and it felt like we’d been gone for three weeks. .
March 17, 2010
Summer Summer Summer!
There are crocuses up in the garden across the street, and the sun was shining bright today. So bright so that I’ve got summer on the brain, even though it isn’t even spring until next weekend. But we’ve just booked our summer vacation, a cottage week away with a lovely lake almost at our doorstep, and I’m so excited for that.
I’m also excited about my summer rereading project. Every summer (except for last summer, during which a newborn was all the reading restriction I needed) I make a point of spending most of my time rereading all kinds of books, each for varying reasons. I’m already compiling this year’s stack– I want to revisit February by Lisa Moore (because of all the negative reviews I’ve read since, and I’m confused as to where they were coming from), Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner (to ensure it still stands up two years later), Small Ceremonies by Carol Shields (because because because), Anne of Windy Poplers by LM Montgomery (because of Kate), something early by Margaret Drabble (because I love her), Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (because I always do), and Still Life With Woodpecker (as part of the retro reading challenge).
February 17, 2010
Getting Settled
Oh, I do love my new website. I love the colours, and I love the doors (which I photographed in Elora last summer), and I love my cool twitter feed in the sidebar, and my “Features” buttons. In the wider world, I love that celebrating Valentines, Family Day and Mardi Gras, and though tomorrow is the first day in three days that isn’t a holiday, my husband’s got the week off work so the fun continues– tomorrow we’re going to the AGO. Though we’re completely exhausted already, and not just because of pancakes. I now see the advantages to preparing your baby’s nursery before the baby’s birth, as opposed to, say, when the baby is eight and a half months old, because it’s an all-consuming process, and then the baby gets so mad when you’re ignoring it to screw crescent-moon light covers into the wall. The one good thing about it though is that the baby gets an awesome room completely devoid of pastels, and perhaps a bit overstimulating, but something tells me our baby would have had that anyway.
Anyway, all this to say that we’ve had nary a spare moment, but I’m almost through Nicholas Ruddock’s The Parabolist and will be posting a review very soon. And next up for me is Patrick Swayze’s autobiography, if I actually decide to go through with it. Which seems like not the best idea in a world with so many books and so little time, but if I don’t, what might I be missing??
October 25, 2009
Flying Babies and Books
Once upon a time, a plane journey meant I’d get a whole book read, and a magazine or two. In-flight movies were for chumps, and I was the annoying person whose reading light was shining bright when you were trying to sleep. And then I had a baby.
And I’ve had a baby long enough to have a good idea of how much reading I’d get done in transit. Whereas before, I’d bring at least four novels and a magazine (because, I mean, what if we had to make an unexpected stopover at an airport without a bookshop?), I brought just one book this time. And I’ve also had a baby long enough to be pleased to get just the first three stories in Birds of America read during our flight.
Thankfully, we went to visit the grandparents, which is the closest thing I’ll have to a vacation from motherhood for quite some time. So I got two issues of the London Review of Books read, finished Birds of America, and read the wonderful Howards End is On the Landing. On the flight home, I began The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen, and got about 60 pages in, mainly because I read while jumping up and down, rocking Harriet in her Little Star Sling. On the whole, I am very satisfied.
Reading aside, flying with babies is hard work, but I really can’t complain, considering the moms I saw flying alone with two children. Harriet was pretty good, didn’t scream substantially too much of the time, airline staff and other passengers were really kind, helpful and accommodating, and having a baby makes the whole world a really friendly place. Once arrived, we had a really wonderful time. Harriet never adjusted to the time change, and went to bed at midnight every night, and while this made her grumpier and grumpier as the week went on, it’s been no trouble getting her back on track at home.
And I’ve got to get back on track too. Since my last “I’m not buying books” post, I think I’ve bought about seven more books. But no more, of course. I’m done, but it does mean I’ve got some serious blogging to do, and more reading to do, and then I’ll go and read some more.
October 16, 2009
European Vacation
Of course, I married my husband for his dreamy accent, but also so I’d have a good excuse to take frequent European vacations. (And it is a European vacation, proof here.)
And it’s that time again, because we’re off to the British seaside– it’s October after all. We’re returning to my husband’s homeland so that his parents can meet their grandchild for the first time, and while they’re busy spoiling her and ignoring us, we’ll partake in English things we love and miss, like cream tea; cheap books, beer and chocolate; newspaper supplements; penguin biscuits; lamb shanks; round postboxes; crisps; good TV and radio. Oh, and the weather. We’ll pack the brollies.
I’ll be posting a few updates while I’m gone, as well as an eagerly-awaited interview, and regular posting will resume in a week.
April 5, 2009
Mini-Break, with frost on
Ah, so we realized why we’d been able to get such a good deal on our spring weekend getaway– because where we were about to get away to could very well still be winter. The snow started falling not far up Highway 400, and we had to contend with roads variously icy or flooded as we made our way toward an old friend of mine to have lunch with her beautiful family. Definitely worth the peril though, as our reunion was glorious, her husband and baby were terrific, and they served a wonderful meal by the warmth of their wood stove. Also good was the jar of maple syrup we came away with, which they’d tapped from their trees.
From there, we proceeded to the resort where we were booked, got lost by the town of Windemere so I was very nearly late for my pre-natal massage at the resort spa. Because it was to be that kind of weekend, the spa I mean, not the tardiness (for we arrived in the nick of time). The bad weather was not afterwards a problem, for we had no desire to go outside. Not while there was a pool to be played in, and a delicious dinner to linger over. This morning I lazed in bed reading and laughing at Playing House by Patricia Pearson, then we were energized enough to make it to the hotel brunch, whose chief feature was a chocolate fountain, and the spread was thoroughly delicious, sumptuous and by today the sun was shining anyway. The snow was quickly melting as we left Muskoka behind us, brilliant skies and gorgeous rays along the road to home.
