November 12, 2009
There is no excuse
There is no excuse for the accompanying photo, except that my baby is adorable. Alright then, bookishly. I thumbed through the new Pierre Trudeau biography the other day, and now I am afraid I’m the only woman in Canada who never slept with him. He didn’t even want me to live with him and have his child, like Liona Boyd (who is Liona Boyd?) on the cover of Hello. This may or may not be unfortunate. I just finished reading What Boys Like by Amy Jones (review forthcoming!) and have just started Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the “Experts”. Patricia has directed my attention to what seems to be the worst picture book ever: The Mischievous Mom at the Art Gallery by “high-octane duo” Rebecca Eckler and Erica Ehm. A new level of narcissism— we have to be reflected in our kids’ books now? “Finally — a picture book for the Starbucks-armed, BlackBerry-checking, gym-going working mother.” Perhaps you’re meant to read it on the treadmill. Chapters/Indigo includes a “Green Matters” option on its online catalogue, narrowing searches to books printed on FSC/Recycled Content. On the best Sesame Street songs (in honour of the show’s fortieth birthday). They forgot ladybug picnic. Charlotte on The Children’s Storefront, a neighbourhood institution that was lost in a fire last week. Rona Maynard’s secrets to decades upon decades of marriage. I’ve been enjoying books/music site Sasquatch Radio. WriterGuy directed me towards the interesting “How Waterstones killed bookselling” (in light of my recent post about how Waterstones killed book buying, for me, at least). And I’m wondering if I’m the only one who starts carrying around my next book to be read once the current read is down to the last fifty pages or so. Indeed, if I don’t have something fabulous to read within arm’s length at all times, I do start to get a little nervous.
November 10, 2009
All the processes of change
“All the processes of change, imagination, and learning ultimately depend on love. Human caregivers love their babies in a particularly intense and significant way. That love is one of the engines of human change. Parental love isn’t just a primitive and primordial instinct, continuous with the nurturing behaviour of other animals (though certainly there are such continuities). Instead, our extended life as parents also plays a deep role in the emergence of the most sophisticated and characteristically human capacities. Our protracted immaturity is possible only because we can rely on the love of the people who take care of us. We can learn from the discoveries of earlier generations because those same loving caregivers invest in teaching us. It isn’t just that without mothering humans would lack nurturance, warmth, and emotional security, They would also lack culture, history, morality, science and literature”. –from The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik
November 10, 2009
Dick Bruna and Miffy
I’ve been a fan of Dick Bruna ever since a trip home from England in 2003, where I was up early mornings due to time change and watched Miffy and Friends on Treehouse. As Miffy is quite popular in England, upon my return I was able to indulge in what has since become a pasttime: purchasing Miffy-branded commercial goods of all kinds. This hobby became very well-practised after I moved to Japan, and consequently, my house is full of glimpses of “that fucking rabbit” (as a friend of a friend once referred to Our Miff). Our recent trip to England yielded more opportunities to Miffy-shop, as we had a layover in Amsterdam (the Land of Miffy). Certainly, I voted with my Euros, and Miffy-Chan won. My friend Paul just sent me a link to this “Dutch Profiles: Dick Bruna” video, presuming I’d like it, and he was correct. And indeed, there is more to Miffy than the shopping, and I think this video makes that quite clear.
November 9, 2009
Do we really need a cup of tea?
“Perhaps there can be too much making cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. We had all had our supper, or were supposed to have had it, and were met together to discuss the arrangements for the Christmas bazaar. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look. ‘Do we need tea?’ she echoed. ‘But Miss Lathbury…’ She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realize that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind.” –from Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
I am so glad to have finally read Barbara Pym, having been thinking about doing so since I read this piece on the Barbara Pym Society way back in 2007. Though when the book began, I wasn’t sure– it seemed dated, a little too concerned with high and low churches (between which I can’t distinguish) and the sexual life of curates and vicars, and then perhaps about two chapters in, it became clear that Pym had a wicked sense of humour. And yes, her Englishness is quite delightful, for those of us who delight in English novels as we do, and that someone is putting the kettle on to boil every other page, and when the tea is too weak or too strong– the agony of it all! Throughout the book, I adored her acuity and her awareness, even when her narrator had less of the same (or did she?).
And how wonderful to know that now I’ve got a wealth of unread Pym novels before me. Better still– she is unfashionable and therefore the books will be readily available used (and I’ll purchase them as such without compunction, for as Barbara Pym is dead, she’s doesn’t need the royalties).
November 7, 2009
Lizzie Skurnick for President
In “Same Old Story“, Skurnick writes: “But that’s the problem with sexism. It doesn’t happen because people — male or female — think women suck. It happens for the same reason a sommelier always pours a little more in a man’s wine glass (check it!), or that that big, hearty man in the suit seems like he’d be a better manager. It’s not that women shouldn’t be up for the big awards. It’s just that when it comes down to the wire, we just kinda feel like men . . . I don’t know . . . deserve them.
The conservatives are right: affirmative action is huge blemish on the face of our nation. And until we stop giving awards to men who don’t deserve them over women who do, we’re sunk. Because our default is to somehow feel like Philip Roth’s output is impressive while Joyce Carol Oates’ is a punchline. Our default is to call John Updike a genius on the basis of four very wonderful books and many truly weird ones, while Margaret Atwood, with the same track record, is simply beloved. Our default is to title Ayelet Waldman’s book, “Bad Mother,” while her husband’s is “Manhood for Amateurs.” Our default is that women are small, men are universal. Well, I know men get sensitive if you call them small. But gentlemen, sometimes you are.”
November 6, 2009
The Defiant Ones
Big thanks to the reader who pointed me towards “The Defiant Ones: Children’s books, parents and discipline” in The New Yorker. What do books including Ian Falconer’s Olivia Series, David Shannon’s No David, and Mem Fox’s Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild tell us about the current state of child-rearing? That apparently, parents are powerless, and kids are adorably manipulative. Admittedly, I think, this is a limited prism through which to view these books, but the article is still pretty fascinating. Recapped here, in blog form, with a slide show, oh my!
Oh, and Olivia. I really desperately admire that pig, and think that any little girl would do well to take on more than a few of her personality traits, except for any little girl that I’d have to live with, of course.
November 6, 2009
The new Nick Hornby novel is good!
A long time ago, before you were born, dude, when I was still single, and life was rubbish… I thought that High Fidelity was a romantic comedy. Part of this was because I wanted to marry John Cusack, of course, but it was also wishful thinking– that loving insensitive men who didn’t love you back could possibly constitute romance or even comedy, because I was really eager to construct for myself a personal narrative arc.
And then I grew up, but actually, I’d gone off Nick Hornby before that, when I made the mistake of tramping through Europe with only How to be Good in my backpack. Idiotic, I know. And I haven’t read anything he’s written since, until his newest novel, Juliet, Naked. My interest was sparked by this piece at the Guardian books blog, that the new novel was “not as predictable as you think”. And I really, really loved it.
Partly because FINALLY, a popular fiction book that isn’t just a mess of plot and character dressed up as a novel!! I’ve really lately been longing for the likes of this. And Nick Hornby has grown up too. He knows exactly what he’s doing here, doesn’t have to try too hard, and the result is remarkably assured. Juliet, Naked is funny, engaging, interestingly intertextual, smart and current. It is decidedly a Nick Hornby novel, so if you never liked him before, don’t bother, but if you liked him back when he did what does best– well, he’s done it again.
And I’m now barrelling through my to-be-read shelf. Before that, I finished My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier, which I enjoyed very much, and am now about to start my first Barbara Pym with Excellent Women.
November 5, 2009
Exploring the Other Side
I gave up hating newspaper columnists ages ago, and I don’t want Margaret Wente to be fired. But her recent essay on her new book only made clear to me the fundamental problem with her approach. People call her on being deliberately provocative, to which she thumbs her nose: “Would it be better if I deliberately set out to be inoffensive?” As though there were only the two extremes, and perhaps Wente is satisfied with making people angry, with provoking that response, but I can’t help think a great writer can do better than that. If conventional wisdom is really so off base, if “exploring the other side” is so important, shouldn’t she do it more carefully? Shouldn’t she actually “explore” instead of committing columnly acts of mischief? Has a Margaret Wente column ever changed anyone’s mind?
Provocation doesn’t make people think, rather, it puts up walls. Which is one reason I’m not as frightened as I should be by American right-wing media (but that might just be because I don’t have cable).
November 3, 2009
On poetry and verse
We’ve been delighting in verse since Harriet was born. We’ve read Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, When We Were Very Young, Jelly Belly and Alligator Pie by Dennis Lee, and we’ve just started Till All the Stars Have Fallen: Canadian Poems for Children. Reading the poems aloud has been tremendous fun, and Harriet likes to listen (most of the time), and I’ve enjoyed rediscovering poems I read years ago and reading many others for the first time– I’d never read the Eliot or A.A. Milne before. I do wonder, however, how much the fun we’re having with verse constitutes anything to do with poetry proper. Will the one lead to the other for Harriet, and for ourselves? And what’s the relationship between the two? Is verse the pop music of literature? How does one cultivate an appreciation for poetry in a child? By which I mean, what is the way from Macavity the Mystery Cat to Prufrock?
