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.
September 6, 2009
Springing
I’ve been disappointed by quite a few books lately, which might be because reading doesn’t come so easy these days, ever since breastfeeding got convenient and doesn’t take up my whole life. So a book has really got to be worth my while, seeing as “so little time” has never been more true. I also continue to put books on hold at the library, and have about thirty books waiting to be read on my shelf. All this to say that I’ve got reservations on springing for a hardcover, but I still think I’m going to buy A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, because Lisa Moore’s review made me hungry to read it.
In other acquisitions news, today I bought Harriet Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
September 1, 2009
A Compendium of Literary Harriets
For my own interest, and compilation will be ongoing. Please feel free to add to the list via comments:
1) A Big Storm Knocked it Over by Laurie Colwin: Harriet aka “Birdie”
2) Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce: Harriet Bartholomew aka Hatty
3) Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh: Harriet M. Welch
4) Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild by Mem Fox: Harriet Harris
5) Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay: Harriet Browning
6) The Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers: Harriet Vane
7) The Gates of Ivory by Margaret Drabble: Harriet Osborne
8) Harriet Bean series by Alexander McCall Smith: Harriet Bean
9) Emma by Jane Austen: Harriet Smith
10) Coventry by Helen Humphreys: Harriet Marsh
11) Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley: Harriet de Luce (in spirit)
12) The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing: Harriet Lovett
13) “Harriet” (poem)by Charlie McKenzie: Harriet Michaels. (In the film So I Married an Axe Murderer, so this is a fictional literary Harriet).
14) Franklin the Turtle series by Paulette Bourgeois: Harriet the Turtle (Franklin’s sister).
15) The Little Friend by Donna Tartt: Harriet Dufresnes
16) Harriet and the Garden by Nancy Carlson: Harriet (who is a dog)
17) The Colour by Rose Tremain: Harriet Blackstone
18) Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym: Harriet Bede
19) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson: Harriet Vanger
20) Mr. King’s Things by Genevieve Cote: Harriet the Owl (who was named for my Harriet!!)
21) After Claude by Iris Owens: Harriet (who has no last name)
September 1, 2009
September
September is the end of my self-imposed fiction writing maternity leave. Though no doubt the world would not miss my fiction if I never went back, I find that I miss it, and I have a feeling the experience of writing it is going to be different now that I’ve had a baby. So my goal is to write for fifteen minutes every day, which is a small goal but with my current schedule will some days be impossible. Therefore I should ideally do it before breakfast, right? Oh, but I’m not quite ready to sacrifice sleep, which is still far too precious. So we shall see.
September is also two literary events I’m looking forward to– first, the launch of Patricia Storms’ picture book The Pirate and the Penguin on September 12 at the Yorkville Public Library. Harriet and I are very excited, and not just because we’ve been told there will be cake. I can’t wait to get the book, and help to celebrate the work of such a marvelous lady.
And then the following week, we’re off to the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival! Terry Griggs! Miriam Toews! Mary Swan! Lynn Johnston! Zoe Whittall! Etc. etc. I am very looking forward.
(Also exciting is that today I’m wearing a pair of pre-pregnancy pants. I’ll sure miss elastic waists, but it had to happen sooner or later…)
