August 3, 2007
Summer books
Will quite shortly be now-rereading The Summer Book by Tove Janssen, which I bought in 2003 when I lived in England, solely because the edition Sort Of Books brought out then was absolutely gorgeous. The bright blue of the photograph on the cover, the photos on the endpages, even the typeface was perfect. I do remember reading this novel in the manky bathtub of my ramshackle terrace house on Silverdale Road, but I regret that I’ve forgotten everything within it. Surely there is more to this book than its cover, and I am excited to rediscover just that. I also think it will make a fine companion to my recently-completed To the Lighthouse. And once that’s done, just to flip the solstice 180 degrees, I am going to read Vendela Vida’s Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name.
I think it’s best to plan ahead.
August 3, 2007
Magic Penny
Disturbing revelations today about the song “Magic Penny”, which I bet you didn’t know was composed by Malvina Reynolds, and which I bet you really didn’t know I used to sing at Sunday School. “Love is something if you give it away, give it away. Love is something if you give it away– you end up having more.” Hmm. Is it any wonder that promiscuity is (apparently) rampant among pre-teens? When giving love away is promoted as the best way to get love back? The song goes on to explain that when you hold on tight to your pennies you get nothing back, but it’s lending and spending that is key to wealth accumulation, and I’m really not so sure about that. No wonder I’ve been led astray! But how illuminating, really, to think the source of so much that ails us can be traced right back to Sunday School. I should have known all along…
August 2, 2007
Precision
“‘It’s odd that one scarcely gets anything worth having by post, yet one always wants one’s letters,’ said Mr. Bankes.
What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate…” -from To the Lighthouse
August 2, 2007
Boys are ordinary
Happy she is tonight, what with golden tomatoes ripe in the garden, and a short story forthcoming in The New Quarterly. Up to her elbows, also, in To the Lighthouse, and with a date scheduled with Rebecca Rosenblum. The whole third person thing because she’s somewhat delirious with glee, and because sometimes the universe sets up so well.
July 31, 2007
Trinity Bellwoods Farmers Market
And so the garden continues to churn out baby tomatoes, cucumbers abounding, no critters have yet eaten the melons, in a few weeks we’ll have red peppers. We’re a bit worried about the big tomatoes, which may have been living a bit too close to the bbq lately and just don’t seem to be ripening, but fingers crossed. All goes well. And tonight we went to Trinity Bellwoods Farmers Market which is very close to our house, and we were thrilled to find their bounty a-plenty still at six o’clock when we were able to get down there. Brilliant! We got swiss chard, pattypan squash, yellow zucchini, baby eggplant, basil, beets (red and yellow), and corn. How fun is eating local in August? Tonight we had pizza and it was absolutely delicious.
In related news, I’m now getting a bit of Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking on the side.
July 31, 2007
The Key
Now rereading To The Lighthouse which is more marvelous than it has ever been, but what kind of idiot had this book before me? What sort of moron drew a moustache and eyeglasses on the woman on the cover, and wrote stupid notes in the margins, and an exam schedule on the endpapers? Oh, of course– the idiot who was me, and she clearly hasn’t always revered the bookish object just as much as she does now. Though I suppose my reverence for this particular volume was undermined by my perpetual study of it in undergrad– I read it in Twentieth Century Lit, Major British Writers, and a Modern Novels course. Though my appreciation did increase with every learning (really– I always read Woolf better with guidance), the book itself became less a novel than a device, to be pried open and emptied of symbolism which then got turned into essays. “Waves” get underlined, and every reference to houses. Mrs. Ramsay likes doors closed and windows opened, which puzzled me at the time(s)– what does that mean? I get it now, but I’ve also been exposed to a whole world of Woolf’s fiction, nonfiction and other writing since the last time I read this. This, which was the first of Woolf I ever encountered. How strange then, like rediscovering a cryptic code once you’ve finally found its key, and you find out it was music all along. I’m not far in yet, but when I read of Lily Briscoe and the space between what she saw and what she could paint, and that struggle, and I see all that is wrapped up in that scene now, and what it must have meant to its writer.
July 31, 2007
What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman’s novel What the Dead Know came recommended by Deanna and Kate for good reason, because the book was fantastic. Please see photo below of me on the dock with a beer, and the book, which just about sums it up. What the Dead Know was an absolute pleasure to take along on a weekend away.
Two teenage sisters disappear from suburban Baltimore in 1975, and a dazed woman emerging from a car accident thirty years later confesses to being one of them. Police detectives must prove that this Jane Doe is truly one of the missing Bethany sisters, but the pieces of the puzzle refuse to add up, roads lead to dead ends, and it’s a meandering path taken toward solution. But oh, such a compelling one.
Here is popular fiction at its finest, well-written, well-storied, taking every advantage of prose. I love that this book gave me the chance to recognize one of my latest new words “postprandial” in print. That characters are bookish, there are scattered literary references. Multiple points of view are convincing, and the story so well-developed that I couldn’t put it down until it was finished, until the last piece had fit. Afterwards I was pleased to realize that time so enjoyed could also feel well spent, and that this feeling didn’t even have to do with the paradise where I’d spent it.
July 27, 2007
Pickle Me This goes to the cottage
Oh, how jealous I am of people with cottages. As great is summer in the city, some days I’d donate my kidneys for a dip in a lake, for the feel of a slatted dock under a beach towel, weeping willow trees, screen door slams, and the cry of a loon. Even for a rainy day, drops bouncing off the lake’s surface. And finally, my dream is scheduled to come true. Hurrah! This weekend we’re off to Muskoka for a cottage weekend away with my two friends oldest and dearest. Hilarity is in store, board games are packed, beer bought, compilation CD compiled (inc Spice Girls, Joni Mitchell, Guns N’ Roses, Dixie Chicks, the Chiffons, Enrique and Cam’rom– can you spell eclectic?) Oh I am SO excited. And books planned: I will be reading What the Dead Know, and I’ve just lost my husband to some book about a boy wizard. We leave very early Saturday morning, have a wine and cheese party to attend tomorrow evening, and from where I stand at this point, the next three days promise to be rather fine.
July 27, 2007
Seasons Change
Now out of school, with my wide-open days full of writing and reading behind me, I’ve found I need something different. Whereas last year it was important for me to work alone, listen to myself (and to my advisor), and dance to my own tune, now that writing is quite officially something I do “on the side”, I crave connection. Sitting at my desk at the end of a long day, putting in a few hours of writing whilst I’m conscious enough, ignoring my husband– it all feels terribly lonely in a way it never did at high noon, bathed in the sunshine of my self-importance. And so I am very lucky that my creative writing group from school is willing to have me back among them. As soon as I knew they would, my whole self was flooded with relief, and contentment. The group is a on some sort of hiatus this summer, but sessions continue informally. This eve I met with Rebecca for two hours of discussion, paragraphs read aloud, and silent typing across the the table. It was absolutely inspiring, and we both came away feeling we’d been quite productive. More than anything, too, I was fascinated by writing in a different place. For the past two years, I’ve been writing in the same little corner, and how fabulous it was to sit somewhere different, in a hot and crowded cafe, and all the different stimuli. Which opened up my story in ways I hadn’t considered, somehow, and it was almost as though I were a different pair of eyes looking at it. Now I don’t think writing on location will always be for me– I am way too much of a hermit– but semi-regularly will be a most interesting exercise. I look forward to finding what future Thursdays have in store.
