September 14, 2009
Pirates and Penguins, oh my!
Yesterday, our wee family attended the launch of Patricia Storms‘ book The Pirate and the Penguin at the magnificent Yorkville Public Library. It was not actually Harriet’s first literary event, as she’d attended Coach House Press’s Wayzgoose Party the week before, but it was her first launch, and the first time she’d sat down for a public reading. She was spoiled by Patricia, I think, who had an actual pirate on hand for the occasion, and was kind enough to pose for a picture with us. Her reading was excellent, and held even Harriet’s three and a half month-old attention span. Afterwards, Stuart and I had shared a slice of cake, which Harriet inadvertantly stuck her hand in.
We loved the book, from each one of its delightful map-illustrated inside covers to the other. Now, I’ve never really *got* pirates myself, except Somali ones– I don’t understand why International Talk Like a Pirate Day is funny, for example. But I’ve been a big fan of penguins going back yonks, and I like alliteration at the best of times. The story was funny, and sweet, and I especially liked its references to knitting and yoga. Patricia has been illustrating really wonderful books for a long time, and we’re so excited that she’s finally written her own!
September 13, 2009
Worst Nursery Rhyme Ever
My friend Kate gave us a gorgeous Mother Goose collection when Harriet was born, and Stuart and I have been happily reacquainting ourselves with the rhymes since then. And Mem Fox does prescribe at least five nursery rhymes per day (“Begin on the day they are born. I am very serious about this: at least three stories and five nursery rhymes a day, if not more, and not only at bedtime, either”) so we’ve been following her recommended dosages, and then some. We ended up receiving another collection used from our neighbours, and so now we’ve got Mother Goose for upstairs and down. And how wonderful, to discover these rhymes with their words and rhythms, and to realize we’ve known them all along, stored somewhere in the back of our minds but coming back to us just like that.
“Hey Diddle Diddle” is Harriet’s favourite, we’ve decided, because it was the first nursery rhyme she ever heard (on her second day in the world, when we walked part way down the hall in the hospital, and stopped at the “Hey Diddle Diddle” mural, because I could go no further).
But we hate “Bat Bat”. Neither Stuart nor I had heard it before, and when we found it in the first collection, we thought maybe the editor’s son had written it, and they’d included it to be nice. Because it was a load of crap. But it’s in our second book too, so it must be real:
Bat bat come under my hat
and I’ll give you a slice of bacon
and when I bake
I’ll give you cake
if I am not mistaken.
We’re going to start skipping this one, so not to put Harriet off nursery rhymes altogether. They’re all a bit goofy, but “Bat Bat” is idiotic: why would you want a bat under your hat? And would one be enticed by a slice of bacon? Who’d entice a bat? Do bats eat cake? And doesn’t all of this suggest the narrator is indeed mistaken? Nonsense is one thing, but stupid is another.
Worst Nursery Rhyme Ever.
September 11, 2009
Readers' Choice
Oh, exciting! I’m one of five finalists in the University of Toronto Alumni Short Story Contest, whose judges will be choosing a winner in the next few weeks. In addition to the main contest, however, there is a Readers’ Choice Award, voted online. Click here to read the five stories (including mine, but I’ll play by the rules and not tell you which it is) and vote for your favourite.
September 10, 2009
Television saved my life
Though I’ve always been partial to television, its tendency to consume my evenings whole meant that I’ve kept my distance from it these last few years. I also don’t have cable, which definitely helps with this. (Further, I hate commericals, which is why I love Midsomer Murders on TV Ontario, also because MM is the best show ever.)
But this summer, it’s true that television saved my life. First, when a friend lent us her Series 1 and 2 DVDs of 30 Rock in late June, and though we’d have to turn it up loud to be heard over the baby’s screaming, each episode provided us with a little bit of lightness every evening. And though I went into the show with Liz Lemon’s character appealing to me most, I was surprised to find that Tracy Jordan became my favourite. In every episode, he’d utter a line that would completely surprise me, and turn my idea of who he was inside out. His complete lack of conformity (to anything) made him always fresh and interesting, bizarre and hysterical. ThoughI do continue to worship at the alter of Tina Fey. (Naturally. I’m a girl with glasses).
The other show I’ve watched, and the one I appreciated the most, however, is CBC’s Being Erica. Which does appeal by its Toronto location (and Jessica Westhead reference– see Pulpy & Midge behind Erica’s desk. This is one bookish show). I’d almost given up on liking Canadian television, as every show I tried to watch was usually terrible, but I had heard good things about this one, and the series was being rerun for the summer. (I also liked that I could watch it online whenever I wanted.) It’s a show with a gimmick (girl goes back in time to learn lessons from her past), but the gimmick was never the point for me.
For me, the part of the hook was half-decent acting from most of the cast. (Most of the cast– some do act like actors on Canadian TV series, but this is a Canadian TV series after all.) A really wonderful soundtrack that catered to my nostalgic side whenever Erica went back to high school. And pretty fantastic writing that veered towards the unexpected. (I also liked it when Erica enquired whether her going back in time to change the past would disrupt the space-time continuum, as you do, and he informed her that her overall impact on the universe was not quite that extensive.)
I put Erica to the test in a recent episode, where Erica is at the movies with her pregnant friend. Friend has to go to the bathroom, but can’t get out from her seat, and just before the show breaks for commercial, water splooshes all over the floor. “If she’s wet her pants instead of having her water break, therefore defying all television convention,” I said, “then this is the best show ever”. (It was a water splooshing all over the floor moment that had me sure I was never again going to watch Sophie, a previous Canadian show I’d tried to like). And back from commerical, Erica won!
Now, full disclosure, Judith’s water did go sploosh later in the ‘sode, but I’m still giving credit. This show isn’t perfect, but it’s a million times better than most of the other stuff on TV. It’s immensely entertaining, and I look forward to Season Two in a couple of weeks.
September 9, 2009
Far enough on the other side…
Though I’m far from out of the woods, I think I’m far enough on the other side to look back with a little perspective. I went through a phase of claiming that no one had warned me how awful the first few weeks of motherhood would be, but that wasn’t true– I’d read Anne Enright’s Making Babies, Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work, I’d seen a good friend go through it eight weeks before. It just never registered, there was no context. I have to say now that the best pregnancy/early days book I read of all of them was Diane Flacks’ Bear With Me: What They Don’t Tell You About Pregnancy and New Motherhood. I’m not sure why I focussed so much on the birth part (and read so many other books on the subject, because birth’s going to happen anyway, and you’ll have so little to say in choosing how), but the afterward was so absolutely accurate, that I’d be struck by lightening if I claimed one more time that I wasn’t warned. Particularly when she says that you should just mark three months off on your calendar and take a seat on the sofa. Though I got off mine more than once, remembering that I didn’t have to was tremendously helpful.
Now that baby is here, however, the very best book I’ve found is 365 Activities You and Your Baby Will Love. Now that my baby can hold things, hold her head up, roll over (!), smile at me and engage with the world, it means a little less, but when she was smaller, this book gave me some insight into how to interact with her. I really had no idea how to do so– I’d never met a newborn, and imagined she’d be born three months old (if only…). With this book, I began to have some fun with her, gained some confidence in my mothering abilities, and she responded to every activity. The ribbons in particular, long dangling ones hanging from a coat hanger that continue to be one of the most fascinating sights she’s ever seen.
Anyway, I got this from the library and then bought myself a copy and have given two as shower gifts since. I’d definitely recommend it, and we do continue to enjoy the ideas they suggest.
September 8, 2009
An Honour!
We here at Pickle Me This are honoured that Julie Wilson mentions us as one of her favourite book blogs in her profile at the CBC Book Club where she is Featured Reader. Thanks, Julie!
September 8, 2009
On Atwood's new novel
I won’t be reading Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, and I tell you this now in order to promote the book, actually. Because Atwood is a certain kind of author, the kind who might be one of your very favourites (as she is one of mine), and you could decide to give her new one a miss. Her range is absolutely epic, which is why I’m always troubled by readers who claim not to like her work. Which work then, I wonder– The Robber Bride? The Blind Assassin? The Handmaid’s Tale? Because if you’re not partial to any of these, I’m not sure what else of literature is left, really.
I, however, am not really partial to sci-fi/genre fic/spec fic, or whatever you decide to call it. And this, I realize, is just as infuriating/limiting as claiming to dislike all Atwood, but that’s a blog post for another day. Today, however, I’ll just have you know that because I probably won’t be crazy about this one, it’s not taking priority among the to-be-reads. Which does not mean that the book sucks, because I probably will buy it for my husband for his birthday. But rather that ‘something for everyone’ means a boatload of stuff that’s not for me, which is just fine. Margaret Atwood’s flexibility and fictional experimentation have made her one of our country’s most fascinating writers for the past thirty years, and even if not in love with every book, you can’t help but admire that.
(I’ll also probably get to this one eventually, and enjoy it a great deal).
September 6, 2009
Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlog by May Friedman and Shana L. Calixte (eds.)
First, a note to everyone who now lands here after google searches regarding “maternal ambivalence”, particularly those who google “ambivalence about the baby’s birth”– fear not. I am the one who cried on the operating table before my c-section because I’d decided maybe I didn’t want a baby afterall, but it really did work out okay in the end, and it will work out for you too. Ambivalence, I like to think, just means you’re just considering all sides, and really, you’d be stupid not to.
Anyway, those readers land here because of my post from last spring “On mommy blogs, maternal ambivalence and my worst tendencies”, a post in which nothing was resolved and I talked around in confusing circles. Since then, I’ve come not closer to conclusions, I’m still troubled about both “mommyblogs” and my feelings toward them, and even having become a mommy myself hasn’t changed my perspective so much at all.
Perhaps resolution is not the point, however. Mommyblogs contain multitudes, and so to think just one thing about them is sort of limiting, which I’m quite sure about now, having read the excellent collection Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlog, edited by May Friedman and Shana L. Calixte. A collection of academic essays containing multitudes itself, and reflecting the wide range of responses that mommyblogs prompt. A microcosm, perhaps, of “the mamasphere”, with dissenting voices, personal stories and experiences shared, academic discourse in an accessible way, these various points of view in a heteroglossic rabble.
I come away from this collection entirely comfortable with my lack of conclusions, understanding really that it is thinking about these issues that is the point. I’m still not convinced that most mommyblogging is a radical act, but just considering why or why not is important, and that there are many issues at stake here. Stand-out essays including, Jennifer Gilbert’s “I Kid You Not: How the Internet Talked Me Out of Traditional Mommyhood”, Lisa Ferris’ “Kindred Keyboard Connections: How Blogging Helped a Deafblind Mother Find a Living, Breathing Community”, Jen Lawrence’s “Blog For Rent: How Marketing is Changing Our Mothering Conversations”, and “Schadenfreude for Mittelschmerz? Or, Why I Read Infertility Blogs” by May Friedman.
I’d never considered mommyblogging marginalization, or the politics of the mamasphere, the implications of corporate marketing, or– for a form so built on self-identification– what it would be read from the perspective of a lesbian mommy in a multiracial family, for example. This is some can of worms.
I see now that whatever my feelings about mommyblogs, to dismiss their importance would be wrong, and that so many bloggers tend to write for themselves and each other, so it doesn’t matter much what I think anyway.
