December 17, 2007
Diamond sharp
The Globe books pages were exciting this weekend. Rebecca Rosenblum’s story in The Journey Stories 19 is called “diamond-sharp”. A great review of When To Walk which I enjoyed reading this Fall. And a review of a new by book by Andrea Barrett whose Servants of the Map I so adored.
Beyond books, Joanna Schneller should be lauded for her article “A Culture Saturated by Sexism”. Though one of Schneller’s most intriguing points was an aside. “In three popular films this year – Knocked Up, Waitress and Juno — women who find themselves accidentally pregnant dismiss the option of abortion almost immediately.” Which is a bit disturbing, but understandable really, and for a most assuring reason: abortion makes for such boring narrative. Or at least everyone I’ve ever known to have had one has just gone on happily with the rest of her life.
December 16, 2007
"The only way to escape this cul-de-sac is invention"
“I know I can’t discover the key to peace in Israel and Palestine. But I want to do justice of some kind, and to make– or find– something of value, of which I will not be unspeakably ashamed. I want to write, and I want the writing not to be a lie.” –Jonathan Garfinkel, Ambivalence
December 16, 2007
Pickle Me This Picks of '07
These are my picks, my favourites, which is why I don’t feel bad that so few were authored by men (though does it count that another author has a man’s name?). I don’t claim that they’re the Best books of 2007 (though they might be) but just my best. I did try to read more books by men this year, by resolution, as I’d so been neglecting that poor gender. And I’m better for it, but still the books women write seem to be the ones I like the very best, however diverse they might be amongst themselves. What follows are such books, listed in the order in which I encountered them.
New Fiction
- Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert (From my review: “a startlingly original novel… What do you do with the past once it’s over?”)
- The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly (From my review: “her achievement is creating a novel so truly beautiful out of some of the ugliest stuff the world has on offer.”)
- Certainty by Madeleine Thien (From my review: “…ultimately it is the sum of these stories which provides the “certainty” amidst uncertainty: meaning is evident, and beauty abounds.”)
- The Ladies’ Lending Library by Janice Kulyk Keefer (From my review: “Here is a summer book through and through, all the while substantial, well-written.”)
- Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida (From my post-review: “has been positively haunting me since I read it.”)
- Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls by Danielle Wood (From my review: ” Rosie Little is “the next Bridget Jones” for which we’ve been longing for ten years.”)
- Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay (From my review: “This book feels too whole to have been created… [A]n entity unto itself, its own world, and a truly magnificent literary achievement.”)
- Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani (From my review: “The Stone Diaries without the ghost, but also something original, beautiful, gentle and lovely in its own right.”)
- The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys (From my review: “The Thames freezing is a perfect example of an extraordinary moment in time… and Humphreys links these moments together in this small beautiful book.”)
- The Great Man by Kate Christensen (From my review: “There is joy here, and there’s goodness, and the whole wide world, which is certainly something for a book.”)
New Non-Fiction
- Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
- Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford by Jessica Mitford
- The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
- Cake or Death by Heather Mallick
- 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa by Stephanie Nolen
- A Memoir of Friendship: Shields and Howard by Blanche and Allison Howard (eds.)
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
- Beijing Confidential by Jan Wong
- Ambivalence by Jonathan Garfinkel
Not New but Glad I Discovered
- Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
- Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
December 16, 2007
Life in a Northern Town
On this Sunday cars so insistent on not heeding weather warnings have become marooned, abandoned by their drivers, and now they’re buried up to their mirrors in drifts outside my house and I’ve got no place to be but here with my best company, good smoked cheddar cheese, and books and periodicals begging for reading.
December 14, 2007
My almost-absolute failure
Lately it’s been very convenient having an award-winning writer for a friend, for upon the completion of my novel two weeks back, Rebecca was kind enough to read it. And indeed she has offered wonderful encouragement, good advice and insight. (Which I will apply to my manuscript over my Christmas Holiday! How fortunate to have the time when I most need it). The most fascinating of all her feedback though is a note of my almost-absolute failure to use subordinate conjunctions. And and and and and, which I suppose is to be expected from anyone who talks too much (and I’ve been accused of this since I learned to speak). What about the “buts” and “thens” though? Reading through another story this evening I realize my “problem” (which it isn’t, entirely) is completely out of control. Causality where art thou? Fascinating. I will explore this further throughout my revisions, then I will use this awareness to strengthen my work, but I will not cease my ands completely for ands are what I do (so it seems). There.
December 13, 2007
Five years ago
It was five years ago today that I went out on the town with this lady, and met a boy who danced as badly as I do. And so much fun and adventure has ensued ever since then.
The moral of the story is that you might just meet your husband in a crowded bar.
December 13, 2007
People instead of their societies
Now reading Ambivalence by Jonathan Garfinkel, and delighting in people instead of just their societies. Which I think might just be the theme of the book, so that’s fortunate. This is the second-last book of my non-fiction commitment and it has been a good ride. Though probably in the future I won’t non-fic in such a binge. I miss the truth and certainty of fiction, and though I have learned very much, my own writing is starting to suffer from a paucity of inspiration. One needs both worlds, I think. But I resolved to read all these books for they were ones I’d been putting off and putting off, and I had to resolve that now was the time sometime. It’s been good for me I think, though now that the end is in sight, I am longing for a prize– a good novel. But there is still good reading to be had in the meantime. A book is a book is a book.
December 12, 2007
Post on my mind
Steph with more to say about post has reminded me of my own Ultimate Post Office Story from when we lived in Japan two and a half years ago– do have a read. And I will shut up about post soon, but these days as I read 800 pages of letters, visit my local PO weekly and anticipate red envelopes in my mailbox every day (and they’re beginning to trickle in) the whole thing is very very much on my mind. With pleasure.
December 12, 2007
Education, Enlightenment and Delight
Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech was so urgent. Indeed I’m not sure how one could learn to be anything without a houseful of books (as insulation and inspiration), however metaphoric or otherwise.
She writes: “We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.”
She raises the question, “How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?”
And it’s an interesting question. Lessing is right, though even if I didn’t think so, she knows better than I do. There is something to be said for listening to one’s elders. The world is where it’s at, and books are its closest cousin, but though I do suspect that a whole day passed on the internet would not be one most productive, so often does the internet manage to serve as a portal not only to literature, but also to the rest of the whole wide world.
Of course my perspective is probably skewed– I tend to stick to bookish blogs and websites anyway. But all the same, just look what I’ve found there lately: Lessing’s speech for starters, which was published in a newspaper halfway around the world; fascinatingly on “little people” in British literature; thoughts on readers within literature; on friendship and what poetry can do; a video of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaking on African writing; some book recommendations.
This year internet sources have pointed me towards books as follows: here for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; here for anything by Kate Christensen; here for Lucky Jim; here for Penelope Fitzgerald (and how fitting! She’s blogged about her today) and Persephone books; I found Laurie Colwin here; and I could go on, but now, in fact, I am beginning to waste time. (See Ms. Lessing, I am listening).
Just as I believe there is no great disconnect between literature and the world, neither does the internet exist in a vacuum; these are worlds which can feed one another. Of course it’s possible to to waste time on the internet, as it’s possible to waste time anywhere, but if you’re discriminating and discerning enough, you can harness the medium. Look around and see that the internet can take you exactly where you want to go– not just towards amusement, but onwards to sources of education, enlightenment, and delight.
