December 18, 2012
Reading indulgently
For the last week, I’ve been reading indulgently, books of the year either read or pushed aside, and I’ve been reading my own idiosyncratic to-be-read stack, the books I’ve bought at college book sales, discovered in clearance bins, at yard-sales, or scooped from cardboard boxes put to the curb. And I’ve only been reading thin books, anything too heavy (literally or otherwise) put away for a later date. I’m in the mood right now for progress, for the massive pile of books before me to appear to be getting under control. I’m in the mood also for books that will go down easy, that will surprise me, new discoveries. I’m so tired of the books that everybody’s talking about, which either means that I start saying what everybody else is, or else the book fails to live up to the hype and I start thinking everybody is stupid. It means, of course, that when I do start to rave about Elaine McCluskey’s The Watermelon Social that it’s a little bit lonely. Can I tell you how much I loved the line, “For God’s sake, Les, when we were young, radio stations played ‘My Ding-a-Ling'”? I’ve also read The Only Snow in Havana by Elizabeth Hay, which is such a strange and wonderful book, an ode to Mexico City and Yellowknife, and the ties between them. About love, loss and the fur trade. Both books were rife with stuff I didn’t understand, but I didn’t mind, and it didn’t hinder my enjoyment. I love these indications of further treasures locked within. And now I am reading The Chronicles of Narmo, which is the novel that Caitlin Moran wrote when she was 15, and I expect I could get though it in a single bath, and that there will be not much there that I don’t understand, but plenty that will make me laugh, and that’s most all right too.
December 17, 2012
Christmas Reads: The Christmas Birthday Story by Margaret Laurence
I hadn’t heard of The Christmas Birthday Story by Margaret Laurence until I read a collection of her letters A Very Large Soul in October. And I was intrigued by the sound of this book, “…a re-telling of the Nativity story, for use with small children. I wanted to tell it in such a way that small children would understand and be able to connect with it. I really wanted to emphasize the birth of the beloved child into a loving family.” For me, Christmas has always been about new life and family, and not any particular baby or family either, so I appreciated Laurence’s approach, particularly as she has religious knowledge to do it properly. Here is the Christmas story but without angels, God doesn’t get a mention. It’s a very human story of family, of travel, of a carpenter and his wife who are going to have a baby. The only thing otherwordly is that most peculiar star.
“That child Jesus grew up to be a man, and he was strong and hard-working, like Joseph the carpenter. He was gentle and kind, like Mary his mother. And he was something else, too. He was a wise teacher and a friend to all people./ So we remember him always, and at Christmas time we celebrate his birthday…”
Long out of print, copies are hard to come by online, but I am glad I tracked one down for us. It’s a beautiful story, ideal for those of us who are not religious but want our children to understand our culture, why we celebrate at this time of year. Helen Lucas’s illustrations are dated, but my child has been raised on vintage picture books and hasn’t noticed.
December 16, 2012
Pickle Me This 2012 Books of the Year
As ever, it’s been a good year for books, and I’m only sorry that not everyone has yet been given the chance to fall in love with all the books that I loved best this year, but these are all books with good long shelf-lives and I know you will be happy to encounter any of these whenever you happen to do so. Just make sure you do.
Here We Are Among the Living by Samantha Bernstein: I loved this memoir-in-emails, this wonderful Toronto book about coming of age in the shadow of 9/11 and the legacy of the Baby Boomers. From my review: It’s a book I emailed my friends about, my friends who were sitting around a booth with me at a College Street diner on the night of September 11 2001, and I told them, “This is our story.”
Mad Hope by Heather Birrell: Heather is my friend, but I have no compunction about including her book on my list with some objectivity because I really had no idea of the depths of her brilliance until until I read it. It’s a beautiful, rich, meticulously-curated short story collection, and it’s turning up on year-end best-of lists all over for good reason. Mad Hope is excellent.
The Book of Marvels by Lorna Crozier: This is the book I kept talking to strangers about on busses, reading them the line about forks: “It’s the only kitchen noun, turned adjective, attached to lightning.” From my review: …one of the few books I’ve ever encountered that dazzles you when its dust jacket falls off: the book is argyle. Its design is splendid, and the contents will not disappoint, guaranteed to appeal to anyone who loves words, and stories, and the thingy-ness of things.
Arcadia by Lauren Groff: Groff is my favourite American writer, with so much more substance than hype about her, and in her second novel Arcadia, she just keeps getting better. From my review: Lauren Groff is a rule-breaker, a boundary-pusher, a genre-blurrer. There’s nobody else quite like like her writing right now, and she writes on the shoulders of those who came before her… She also writes with a deep appreciation and awe for history, for the role of story within history, and for the epic. Her first novel had a larger-than-lifeness about it, which is not so unusual for a book a writer has been working her life for, but it’s less usual for a second novel and for it to be pulled off so successfully too.
The Forrests by Emily Perkins: One of a number of brilliant books this year that we haven’t heard nearly enough about. From my review: The Forrests is like The Stone Diaries, but edgier, and structured as the interior of its subject’s mind rather than her scrapbooks, and it’s enormously successful. Rachel Cusk, Virginia Woolf. Vividly human characters, gorgeous writing. It’s full of surprises, twists, turns and moments of illumination, quiet but profound in its brilliance, and devastating to have to finally put down.
Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton: Oh, sweet summer time and this gorgeous book I bought one sweltering day on a walk home from the swimming pool. From my review: Swimming Studies is a difficult book to explain, and I’m glad that I get to review it in my blog so that I don’t necessarily have to. That I can simply say that the whole thing just works, for no reason I can really fathom. Leanne Shapton writes about ponds and pools she has known– the Hampstead Heath Ladies Pond, the pool at the Chateau Laurier, the baths in Bath, and so many others. She writes about morning practice: “Ever present is the smell of chlorine, and the drifting of snow in the dark.” A many-page spread displays her extensive bathing suit collection. She includes drawings of her teenage swim teammates, with brief biographies for each: “I’m not crazy about Stacy since noticing that she copied onto her own shoes the piano keys I drew on the inside of my sneakers.”
Malarky by Anakana Schofield: According to everybody that matters, this was one of the best books of the year, and when it comes out in the UK next year, the whole world is going to know it. From my review: If Hagar Shipley met Stella Gibbons, the end result might be Anakana Schofield’s Malarky, but then again, it probably wouldn’t be, because Malarky refuses to be what you think it is. And moreover, it probably wouldn’t be because the book is meant to be chock-a-block with allusions to James Joyce and Thomas Hardy. Don’t tell anybody, but I still haven’t read Ulysses (and hence the Gibbons instead of the primary sources), but I have read Malarky, and it was brilliant, which I know for certain even with the burden of my literary ignorance. And that I can pronounce a book as wonderful even whilst unable to access its higher planes of greatness is certainly saying something for the book itself, which is mostly, “You’ll like it too.”
The Blondes by Emily Schultz: I devoured this book in a weekend, and as soon as I was finished it, I started to read it again. From my review: Hazel’s few friendships and alliances with women are shattered as individuals try to navigate their respective ways to safety… But Hazel ultimately finds herself entirely powerless to her biological destiny and to patriarchal tyranny when the plague and its circumstances make impossible her choice to terminate her unwanted pregnancy. Schultz shows how change creeps in little by little so that to a feminist academic, lack of access to abortion can become almost remarkable. The Blondes is powerful and solid, gripping and scary.
The Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder: A wonderful book, and the world thought so too because The Juliet Stories was nominated for a Governor General’s Award this year. I called it “one of the best Canadian books you’re going to read this year,” and as the year draws to a close, I’m standing by that declaration.
Afflictions and Departures by Madeline Sonik: The best part of my life is that I got to spend this year coming up with excuses to put this fantastic book’s cover on the main page of 49thShelf. Winner of the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize and shortlisted for the 2012 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction. From my review: Sonik stitches her personal stories to the fabric of her time. Her narrative voice is blessed with startling omniscience, with the benefit of hindsight, and with an acute awareness of both how the extraordinary can be illuminated by ordinary detail, and also of how the ordinary and extraordinary are so often intricately connected. Sonik’s prose reveals her poet’s skill, as does these essays’ use of imagery and symbolism, but the broadness of her vision and the deftness with which she fits together surprising pieces of reality is evocative of Joan Didion’s masterful non-fiction.
A Large Harmonium by Sue Sorensen: This book came out last year, but I only discovered it in June, and I’ve been recommending it steadily ever since to readers who have not been disappointed. From my review: Winnipeg resident Sorensen has much in common with Carol Shields, who was another, except that her tone is darker and more overtly hilarious. The novel’s pace is brisk and easy, which is not to say “light”, because there is depth here, but the story goes down just as well. Just as Shields did, Sorensen’s got a grasp on joy and how it factors amidst life’s absurdities. This is a wonderful novel with broad appeal. It’s absolutely the funniest and one of the best books I’ve read in ages.
December 13, 2012
Ten Years Ago
“It was ten years ago today that I met your Daddy,” I said. “And then you had a baby, right?” said Harriet, eager to get to her favourite part of the story. (Harriet cries if we look at photographs and she’s not in them. The Harriet-less world does not interest her one bit, and sometimes I see her point.) “No, not right away,” I said. “We lived in England for awhile and we were poor and bored, and we slept on an inflatable bed that slowly deflated every night. We were just out of school, barely employable, and we had no idea how we were going to do anything we wanted to do. So we decided to move to Japan, that old last resort. We had an apartment there that was smaller than our kitchen, and one day Daddy bought me a desk so I could write. He carried it home on his bicycle. We decided to get married, so we went back to England to have our wedding.” “And then you had a baby, right?” said Harriet. “Not yet,” I said. “We moved to Toronto, and I went to graduate school. Daddy had to wait a year before he was able to work in Canada, and we had to shop at the Dufferin Mall No-Frills. Our budget was $50 a week. And every month we had $20 to 
spend on fun, so we went to Riverdale Farm often and we went out a lot for ice cream. And it wasn’t really that bad. I don’t know how we did it, and I couldn’t ever go back, but we learned a lot. Like to how to subsist on chickpeas.” “When do I come?” Harriet asked. I told her not quite yet. But we knew we wanted to have a baby, and so we moved to a new apartment where there would be room for our baby when she came. Our apartment used to feel enormous, but now it is brimful of bookshelves and tiny socks are scattered throughout every room. No amount of picking up the socks ever changes this reality. Harriet gets her sock-discarding affliction from her dad. I tell her, “We had a baby. And we liked you so much, we want to have another one.” She likes the story now. Harriet is looking forward to being a big sister, and what lies in store. And so are we, the great unknown. Which is terrifying, but also wonderful, and who ever could have foretold ten years ago what this extraordinary decade together would hold?
December 13, 2012
Mini Reviews: You Never Know and Earth and High Heaven
There are times when the books on my To Be Read (But Not New-Releases) shelf sit pitifully neglected, gathering dust (though dust-gathering is sort of a given in our house). And then there are times like now when I’m just barrelling through them, when I could stand to never read another new-release again and what I want is tried, tested and good. When I want something I wasn’t expecting at all.
Since falling in love with Isabel Huggan in October (which is remarkable, really. October was a month during which my love was ridiculously hard to provoke. I hated everybody and everything.) I’ve been looking forward to reading her other books. You Never Know is a collection of short stories published in 1993. Some of the stories have a familiar tone to The Elizabeth Stories, narrated in a child’s voice, or in the voice of one looking back upon childhood. But there is lots of range here too in narrative approach, setting, and character. The story that blew me away was “The Violation”, the story of a newly pregnant woman trying to find a place for herself within the rural community that she and her husband had relocated to. The man who plows their lane stops by for lunch, and she proceeds to misunderstand him and he to offend her in the most subtly brutal, unexpected way possible. The gulf between them is enormous, and both of their situations are heartbreaking.
I would describe the shape of Huggan’s stories as inverted-triangular, like a bouquet of flowers. The surface is broad and pretty, but there is enormous depth there, and it goes down down down to levels you might not want to encounter. The themes of most of these stories relate to the collection’s title: how hard it is to know one other, the untraversable gulfs that lie between us. From the conclusion of the book’s final story: “Why we enter each other’s lives and how we’re meant to fit together is more that is given to us to know. And yet that’s what we want, isn’t it? That’s what we want to understand.”
And then I read Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham, which I found more than a year ago in a cardboard box on Heather Birrell’s front porch. I was aware of the title from a list of English Quebec fiction on 49thShelf. It’s the story of a upper-class Anglo Montrealer who falls in love with a Jewish lawyer, and is surprised to learn that the attitudes of friends and family are not so far removed from those in Nazi Germany and in Europe, where Canadian soldiers were fighting WW2. The war was a complicated issue in Quebec, and becomes even more so against the backdrop of Marc and Erica’s romance. It’s a wonderful Montreal novel, very contemporary in its feel, even as it reminded me of Hugh MacLennan all the while–Barometre Rising in particular, with its strong female character. Apparently Two Solitudes came out in this book’s shadow (Graham’s book won the Governor General’s Award, and was a huge bestseller in the US), and MacLennan resented this, considering Graham’s a lesser book for its “not explaining Canada”, for the anywhereness of her setting. Though that wasn’t the impression I got from Earth and High Heaven. It was very Canadian, particularly so in its setting and perhaps an easier book to encounter than MacLennan’s for not being didactic. It’s a conventional novel, but daring for its time and really well written. I enjoyed it completely and I’m so glad it’s in print. More readers need to know it.
December 12, 2012
Book picks at Vitamin Daily
I’ve been recommending books left, right and centre lately (which doesn’t really make a change, does it?). Check out “Book Report: 5 picks for winter break” at Vitamin Daily for a particularly delightful selection.
December 11, 2012
Bunch holiday reads (for grownups!)
(Cross-posted from Bunch Family)
If the holidays are offering up a little window of reading time in your life, it’s important that you give that time to a book that’s worth it. The following is a list of great books guaranteed to go down easy once the kids have gone to bed, and stay with you long after the last page is turned.
The Book of Marvels by Lornia Crozier: Crozier is one of Canada’s most renowned poets, and in her latest book, which is not quite poetry, she turns her attention to the domestic, illuminating the extraordinary life of every-day things. For example, from “Fork”: “It’s the only kitchen noun, turned adjective, attached to lightning.” The book is slim, gorgeous and devourable. A must-have for every household, actually.
Stopping for Strangers by Daniel Griffin: “The first time I got pregnant, it was like the baby was stealing our youth… And then when I miscarried, it was like we were robbed again, and so I got pregnant again.” Here is parenthood and family life in all its complexity. Griffin’s short story collection was shortlisted for the 2012 Danuta Gleed Literary Award and is a testament to the short story’s amazing force.
How t
o Get a Girl Pregnant by Karleen Pendleton Jiménez: Pendleton Jiménez’s memoir frames a very difficult question, “How is a butch Chicana lesbian supposed to get sperm?” In turns hilarious and heartbreaking,with incredible honesty and great writing, the book sheds light on the experience of infertility and the longing so many people feel for the (seeming im)possibility of parenthood. This one was nominated for a Lamba Lit Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography.
The Blondes by Emily Schultz: I can say that this is the only feminist novel that I’ve ever handed to my husband and said, “Hey, read this. It’s about an apocalyptic plague.” He liked it as much as I did. When a virus begins infecting blond women with murderous rage, women assume their old familiar positions turned against one another. It’s a fast-paced and suspenseful book that offers remarkable insight into women’s relationships and also reproductive rights.
A Large Harmonium by Sue Sorenson: This is the book that I can’t stop recommending, and no one has been disappointed yet. A fun and hilarious book about balancing work and family life, a book with joy at its core, it’s a year in the life of a university English professor who finds herself dissatisfied with her lot. She’s contemplating writing a book about bad mother’s in children’s literature: “And in Good Night Moon, where has the mother buggered off to? That intractable little bunny who won’t go to sleep has been left in the care of a rather odd old lady sitting in a rocker… ”
Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens: If you’re going to curl up with one book about a serial killer this year, let this be the one. Sara Gallagher’s life unravels when she discovers her birth father is a notorious killer, and then her identity is leaked on an online forum. And then she finds out that her father is still out there, and that he wants to get in touch. As Sara plots to keep her family safe, she must also grapple with the disturbing possibilities of her genetic inheritance.
Sussex Drive by Linda Svendsen: For those of you looking for something political, I suggest Linda Svendsen’s smart and funny satirical novel. Svendsen re-imagines the 2008 prorogation of Canadian parliament from the perspectives of the power-house wife of Canada’s right-wing Prime Minister and the exotic, unlikely Governor General who lives across the street. Canada’s First Lady is going to let nothing–not even her teenage daughter’s pregnancy by way of a member of her husband’s RCMP security force–come between her husband’s party and its elusive majority. Can the Governor General stop her?
Cadillac Couches by Sophie B. Watson: This book is fun, a tribute to musical fandom, an ode to ’90s Grrrl power, the tale of Annie and Isobel’s road trip beginning at the Edmonton Folk Festival and ending up at a Hawksley Workman show in Montreal. Along the way, Annie discovers Ani DiFranco and is half-transformed, they have a breakdown in Wawa, max out their credit cards, and have to busk in order to earn enough money to keep the gas tank topped up. Annie is convinced if they can just make their way to Hawksley that he will fall in love with her, and her half-transformation will be complete.
Moby Dick and Pride and Prejudice from Cozy Classics: And for those of us who’d like to stick to literature with a bit of substance, definitely check out the Cozy Classics board books. With no more than one word per page, the books actually manage to stay loyal to their source material, plus the felt puppets in the illustrations are adorable. And we all know that these sorts of picture books are really for the parents anyway.
December 10, 2012
Christmas Reads: Comfort and Joy by India Knight
I received this book for Christmas two years ago, the hardcover version, which is important to note because it features this gorgeous cover by Leanne Shapton. In a photo from that Christmas 2010, I am curled up on the couch with this novel and enormous glass of beer, which is pretty much an ideal way to spend any day. I reread Comfort and Joy this past weekend sans beer but with just as much pleasure. How nice to have a Christmas book for the adult set, and how nice too that the book stands up to a second time around.
It’s peculiarly structured, the continuing story of Clara Hutt who first appeared in Knight’s novel My Life on a Plate. Comfort and Joy takes place over the Christmases of 2009-2011, illustrating the pressure Clara feels each year to provide a perfect Christmas for her fractured family. The family becomes more fractured as the years go on–Clara’s second marriage ends, she worries about how it’s affecting her children. All the while she’s accommodating her eccentric extended family, several wacky friends, ex-husbands, and in-laws to create a 21st century perfect family Christmas. Not perfect as in magazine perfect–here there is no such veneer, and the table conversation is always unfailingly hilarious, however slightly offensive. Clara doesn’t mind being offensive, but she just wants everybody to have a good time, to feel a sense of belonging she herself missed growing up.
Comfort and Joy is light, smart and funny, and sure to delight anyone who’s enjoyed Knight’s other novels or her newspaper columns. A treasured volume in my Christmas library.
December 10, 2012
"THEY… USED… TO… READ! They'd READ and READ."
The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set —
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we’ve been,
We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone’s place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they’re hypnotised by it,
Until they’re absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don’t climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink —
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK — HE ONLY SEES!
‘All right!’ you’ll cry. ‘All right!’ you’ll say,
‘But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!’
We’ll answer this by asking you,
‘What used the darling ones to do?
‘How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?’
Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?
We’ll say it very loud and slow:
THEY… USED… TO… READ! They’d READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching ’round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it’s Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There’s Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They’ll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start — oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They’ll grow so keen
They’ll wonder what they’d ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.
-Roald Dahl, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
