February 27, 2009
Gluttony
I am being inundated with marvelous books: what do I see but Lauren Groff with a new one out. And I picked up Swim at the post office tonight– it’s gorgeous. Then a stop at the library, where waiting for me were My Misspent Youth: Essays by Meghan Daum, Coraline (the graphic novel), and Pool-Hopping should be in any day now. Have also just eaten a whole bag of cheese curds but shhhh.
February 26, 2009
Two fat things, and a few wonderful things
I’m now reading and thoroughly enjoying a big fat American novel, Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos. To be followed by The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant by Michel Trembley, which appears to have no paragraphs, but all the same, I’m hoping to really like it. Which will be my Canada Reads lot read. And then, that my dad is now cancer-free, my husband does not have glaucoma but that he does still have a job, and our baby is fabulous and kicking. We’ve booked a weekend away in early April. Also, how about this weather? It felt like springtime on this February morning…
February 26, 2009
No contradiction
“It’s my audacious hope that a man born and raised between opposing dogmas, between cultures, between voices, could not help but be aware of the extreme contingency of culture. I further audaciously hope that such a man will not mistake the happy accident of his own cultural sensibilities for a set of natural laws, suitable for general application. I even hope that he will find himself in agreement with George Bernard Shaw when he declared, “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.” But that may be an audacious hope too far. We’ll see if Obama’s lifelong vocal flexibility will enable him to say proudly with one voice “I love my country” while saying with another voice “It is a country, like other countries.” I hope so. He seems just the man to demonstrate that between those two voices there exists no contradiction and no equivocation but rather a proper and decent human harmony.”– Zadie Smith, “Speaking in Tongues”
February 25, 2009
Swim-Lit
I’ve been swimming five days a week for the past six months, and it’s become such an important part of my life. So much though that I think I’m addicted, but then there are worse things. But I crave it, the way I can stretch into each stroke, the rhythm, the sounds the world makes under water. Though I shower afterwards, I spend the rest of the day smelling of chlorine, but I love it. Pushing off from the wall, arms sweeping the surface, even shaking the water out of my ear. There is something meditative about it, though not wholly because I certainly never spend my lengths thinking of anything very interesting or productive. But it’s the quiet, the echo, feeling all the the way spent when I’m done, yet as invigorated as if I’ve just napped. Drying off and the water drops that remain there, each one singular, stuck fast to my skin.
Via Kate S., I was referred to Swim: A Novel by Marianne Apostolides. I’ve ordered it, and am looking forward to its arrival. An entire novel in lengths– dive in metaphors are too easy, but I’m longing for immersion. I also plan to read Swimming by Nicola Keegan, which is out this summer. And if you’re a publisher looking to peddle anything further in the realm of swim-lit, I’m pretty sure I’m your man.
February 25, 2009
Speaking of gorgeous books
… and speaking of gorgeous books, how about Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant, which entered my life today. And I knew as soon as I saw it, because these days a fabulous book cover design often has these two words behind it: Kelly Hill. I can’t wait to start reading. The book also has me reflecting on literary tortoises, which are really quite common– Lightning from Arcadia springs to mind from the start, because it’s fresh there, and I do know that they came up in Woolf’s essays, if not her fiction (which I’m not sure of). There are more, I’m sure, and one day I’ll write the definitive guide.
February 24, 2009
darkness of a child's heart
“You can control and censor a child’s reading, but you can’t control her interpretations; no one can guess how a message that to adults seems banal or ridiculous or outmoded will alter itself and evolve inside the darkness of a child’s heart.”– Hilary Mantel in The Guardian
February 24, 2009
Out in the world– a concert and a play
Various events this winter are conspiring to keep me from becoming hermetic, and also providing me with opportunities I won’t see again for a long time once The Baby is born. For example, a concert– Dar Williams, live at the Mod Club this Saturday!! I am very excited, as I’ve not seen her since 2003 (live in Sheffield), being too poor for tickets when she was in Toronto in ’05. And then a play! My very favourite play, no less- Arcadia, performed at Hart House Theatre in March. By Tom Stoppard– have you read it? I’ve done so many times over the past ten years, and can’t wait to delight in it again on stage.
February 23, 2009
Books worth it for their covers
From The Guardian Books Blog on Book Covers, I was referred to the AbeBooks promotion 30 Novels Worth Buying for the Cover Alone. Containing some picks I’d definitely concur with– Pickle Me This faves Skim, The Monsters of Templeton, The Boys in the Trees, and Fruit. And so inspiring me to showcase the most gorgeous book I’ve read in ages (albeit not a novel): the McSweeney’s edition of Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends. The “dust jacket” actually constructed of three different panels, so that the multiple dimensions aren’t just an illusion. It was almost the whole reason I bought the book, and I wouldn’t even have been disappointed if the content had not been as brilliant as it was. As it turned out, I was just biblio-spoiled.
February 23, 2009
Pickle Me This reads Canada Reads: The Outlander by Gil Adamson
Right there on the back cover of Gil Adamson’s The Outlander, it’s labelled, “Part historical novel, part Gothic tale, and part literary Western”. The sort of hybrid book readers go crazy for, and I’ve certainly never heard a word against it. Adamson’s first novel (though she’s published collections of short stories and poetry before) has at its forefront Mary Boulton, “The Widow”, who we find at the beginning of the story fleeing through the woods with dogs on her trail, being pursued by her enormous red-headed brothers-in-law. It appears that she’s killed her husband, so the brothers are determined to find her and force her to face some kind of justice.
The book refers back to a time when the maps were all empty, though we know that Mary Boulton is in Western Canada. The shape of the novel being her track across that empty place– imagine her as a furiously dotted line. Along the way she encounters several different characters, though some are hallucinations. Never safe, she stays nowhere too long, and passes from one port to another until she ends up in the mining town of Frank, British Columbia.
The book’s strongest feature is its language, I think, which is gorgeous and evocative. Describing a nature which is in turns glorious and brutal, as well as the bare facts of Mary Boulton’s situation– her hunger, her sickness, her madness. She’s an intriguing character, even more so in the flashbacks when we see she comes from a background like nothing you’d expect of a murderess, and that she was a very different kind of girl once upon a time.
Unfortunately, I never felt I got close enough to her, to understand why she killed her husband, to understand why she runs. She was a character distant enough to be called just “The Widow”, and those around her were even more distant, incidental to her flight. The plot seems a loose construction around the language, which dragged down to reveal that not so much was there. The book said to be “gripping” but I was never gripped. With every page, with every new character she encountered, I’d think, “Ok, now it starts…” but it never did for me.
Which I don’t think is the book’s fault, but I was just so far from its ideal reader. “Part historical novel, part Gothic tale, and part literary Western” seems a recipe for the kind of book that puts me to sleep. Which is why my review is a bit lax here, but there really aren’t hours in the day for me to spend thoughtfully reviewing books I don’t like. Particularly when so many others do like this one, and they can’t all be wrong. I’ll be really interested in hearing readers’ arguments for this book, but I think it might all just come down to a matter of taste.
**Check out a more positive take on The Outlander over at the Canada Reads site.
Canada Reads Rankings (so far):
1) Fruit by Brian Francis
2) Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
3) The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
4) The Outlander by Gil Adamson
February 19, 2009
Cusp of falling headlong
I’m now reading The Outlander, which I’m not particularly loving, but I feel I may be on the cusp of falling headlong into, particularly if DGR’s assessment is right. Though I do fear I may have set literary standards too high, having spent part of this weekend reading Jools Oliver‘s Diary of an Honest Mum. (You can read the hilariously digested version here). We shall see… Elsewhere, I loved Rona Maynard’s take on the Facebook 25 things meme. To Nigel Beale for the best used book sales in Canada (and I concur, because it includes my favourite). My baby kicks like mad to this song. And there would be more, if I weren’t so tired, or if lately the newspaper had been remotely interesting.
