July 19, 2007
Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
I’ve got no qualms about saying that Animal Vegetable Miracle is one of the best books I’ve ever read about science and nature. I’ve only ever read two other books as good, and they were Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and so a triumverate now, of these books which have shown me how little I know about the world. But they’ve also invested that blank space of my ignorance with such wonder, and the very beginning of knowledge.
Animal Vegetable Miracle is not so much a lifestyle guide. Novelist Barbara Kingsolver (who has a graduate degree in biology, for the record) recognizes that most families do not have the means to do what hers did: to spend a year of self-sufficiency, growing all their food on their farm. No, she is not saying to do as they did, rather her message is “Here is what we did, and all that we learned.” And so the reader learns in turn– about the vegetannual (seen here). I never knew how early greens like lettuce come up in the growing season, or why. I didn’t know why green peppers come into season before the red ones. With the same ignorance Kingsolver notes at the beginning of her book, I never realized that potatoes grow with stems and leaves. I was aware that tomatoes in the winter weren’t the best thing, but I’d never thought too much about it.
I gleaned practical tips from this book– to prevent rotting in the soil, stick a paperplate underneath my watermelons (and indeed we’ve got another one coming in in the garden!). The book contains seasonal recipes, instructions about canning and preserving, a helpful bibliography and list of resources. Alongside Kingsolver’s beautiful prose, her husband and daughter have contributed articles on areas of their own expertise. And such is the story of a year in a family, though it spans more than a year, certainly. It takes three years before an asparagus plant is ready to eat after all. Planting must be carefully planned well in advance to allow for enough harvest to see them through the winter. For people with all the means that they have, Kingsolver’s family still finds that sustenance to be a full time job, out of reach for most of us. But then, writes her husband Steven L. Hopp: “If every US citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we could reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels every week.” That’s small steps, and for most people very possible.
However infinitely educational, didacticism is not at the forefront of Animal Vegetable Miracle. The story (and it is a story) is by turns touching, hilarious, spiritual and rabble-rousing. How lucky when brilliant writers have the best stories to tell. It was a pleasure to read, and I’d urge it upon you as something so terribly important.
July 19, 2007
The Bake Shop on Harbord
I’ve been noticing The Bake Shop, the understated establishment recently opened in a former bike shop on Harbord Street. Something about it had me wishing it a fighting chance, as it’s quite clearly the fruit of someone’s efforts to start a small business up from nothing. And the shop has been shaping up well these last few weeks, with a fresh paint job and a mural on the side. Every day on my way home I’ve been tempted to check it out, try a cookie. Today I succumbed, and met the best cookie I’ve ever eated– and all for 80 cents!
The owner told us she’s been busy, actually, with lots of orders for her cakes and cookies. She said it’s just her working right now while the business gets started, and I said that must be tough. I asked, “Do you work all day?” She said, “Oh no, only fifteen hours.” She gave us a sample of her homemade chocolate ice cream (a cone for $2), and the flavour was heavenly. Stuart and I ended up having to split one cookie as there were only two left, and apparently one of her customers had called ahead and asked for one to be set aside. I understand why. We’re going back there. And you should go there too.
July 19, 2007
My library
I’ve heard the call from Booklust to “show us yer library”, and so I will. Here’s mine. Though I envisage one day having a library unto itself, right now it’s embedded right into the household with the TV in its midst. Which is not such a terrible thing, really, to get to look at our books all the livelong day. I can gaze up at the colours on those shelves the way I might lie under the Christmas tree just to see the lights sparkle– the effect is as good. My library is arranged in alphabetical order by author’s surname, the one exception being biographies which use subject’s. ‘A’ starts at the bottom of the tall shelf and the alphabet continues up and over to the shorter shelf. I start at the bottom so I don’t look as obsessive-compulsive at first glance. The pile of books to the right of the tall shelf are my discards– for the Victoria Collge Book Sale or for friends to pick through when they come over. Though it hurts me, I make a point of only keeping books I love, and pruning my shelves periodically gives me an enormous sense of well-being. But even still, the collection is spreading rapidly. We have another tall shelf on reserve, currently housing photos, knick-knack paddywhacks, photo albums, and my collection of children’s books but I suspect it will be exclusively books before long. I am looking forward to moving out of our apartment and into a house, so that I can collect away with less compunction.
July 18, 2007
A Certain Definition
“The choreography of many people working in one kitchen is, by itself, a certain definition of family, after people have made their separate ways home to be together”. -Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Vegetable Miracle.
July 17, 2007
The best of what's around
Heather Mallick’s latest, in which she gets told off by Margaret Atwood (so you learn sans context). I learn that Margaret Drabble is reading Jules Verne this summer (thanks Leah). And that books win! (naturally– though I think there are even books written by people not named Jonathan and also people with xx chromosomes.) India Knight on why erasing history is a bad thing, and so let’s not censor Tintin. Oh! And on Shirley Hughes, who has written some of the books I’ve always loved– a wonderful piece, in which I find out that “Dogger” is real!
July 16, 2007
Workaday Worlds
A frequent complaint about about contemporary fiction, or at least stories which aspire to become contemporary fiction, is that characters don’t work. Whereas in the past, work might have dominated the narrative (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning comes to mind), modern characters’ lives take place after hours. Interesting to note that two exceptions I’ve just thought of are about doctors: Saturday and Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures. I don’t know what that means, however these doctors’ idle contemporaries tend to be artists, academics, or documentary filmmakers, and their work is usually peripheral. Or so it’s been said, but when I think back to the last nineteenth century novel I read (The Portrait of a Ladylast week, of course) nobody there did anything either, save for Henrietta Stackpole. And granted Henrietta’s vocation did give her character particular appeal, and I realize James perhaps is a class thing, and these are all just thoughts to think about. Woolf’s working characters were not usually at the forefront of her novels (or if they were, only subtly so ala Lily Briscoe, though of course she was an artist, which brings us back to the beginning). Many characters in books I read, particularly classics, seem to be bankers, but this tends to entail nothing beyond leaving the house in the morning and coming home in the eve.
I have two things to say about all these unformed thoughts, the first being that though none of this is new, what might be new is how positively unremarkable most modern jobs actually are. I cannot imagine what sort of narrative would grow up around the job I’m doing these days, or many I’ve had in the past. Prosaic is not even the word for many jobs around– mind numbing, soul destroying, base and boring. I am fortunate that such is NOT my experience at the moment, but think of how many people must work in call centres. Think of all the stories that will never be written about call centres. I am not terribly convinced this is a bad thing.
The second thing is that Lionel Shriver, like my very favourite Margaret Drabble, always keeps her characters occupied. An anthropologist in The Female of the Species; pro-tennis players in Double Fault; illustrater, think-tankian, snooker player, variously in The Post-Birthday World; travel guide writer and advertising location scout in We Need to Talk About Kevin. Their occupations make Shriver’s characters whole, their worlds rich, and give their stories legs to stand on. Her details are so fascinating, and I can’t think of how much learning it must have taken to acquire them.
July 16, 2007
Time time it was
Time it was. Friday night date, out for dinner and then to the ROM. I had no strong feelings about the new addition, except that I was startled by sunlight once we emerged from the wonderful Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit “History of History”, as I had forgotten about the world. There is something to that. Saturday we got a new hi-fi, very exciting. We bought our old one in the days of impecuniousness, and it wasn’t very good– the CD player door had become awfully choosy about functioning. And so no more. Saturday night was dinner, theatre, and drinks drinks drinks until well in the morning with friends oldest and dearest, et. al. Somehow hangovers were avoided, and I spent today well in the relaxing way (though freshly baked scones were involved).
Devastating gardening event was that our two watermelons, whose development had been as thrilling to watch as a small baby’s, were ruined by some sort of creature with teeth. A sort of creature that doesn’t appreciate the treasure which is watermelon, as they disconnected them from the vine, gnawed on the green bits leaving gaping holes, and broke my heart a bit. Honestly honestly, I could have cried.
In sort of related news, now reading Animal Vegetable Miracle.
July 14, 2007
Glass Worlds
I was surprised to find that the highlight of my trip to the ROM yesterday was the Glass Worlds Exhibition. Intitially I’d scoffed at the idea of a collection of paperweights, but they turned out to be beautiful and mesmerizing. And bookish too, in their own way, as the exhibit explained to me. As literacy increased, desks became fixtures in many households, as did the paraphernalia which adorned them. And just think of your favourite books: how many of their manuscripts must have been saved from a breeze by the fact of a paperweight? (Though truthfully, actually, I’d suggest not that many. I have a suspicion that functionality was never the ultimate object here).
July 13, 2007
Our lettuce is bolting
Our lettuce is bolting. Since I was very young and new, I don’t think anything has taught me so much so quick about the world as has having a garden.
July 13, 2007
ReReading Kevin
I had a feeling that We Need to Talk About Kevin would be an important book to reread. First read two years ago after a whole lot of Orange Prize and political hoopla, I was doubtful I would like it. It had been cast as variously feminist and anti-feminist depending on who was talking, and employed as a polarizing weapon in the mommy wars. But when I started reading, I realized that easy issues of polarity weren’t what Lionel Shriver was on about, and that she wasn’t spouting rhetoric as much as asking questions. What I remember most about finishing this book the first time was an urgent need to find somebody else with whom to discuss it.
And so to approach it two years later would be interesting. First, that I’d know the big twist was coming– could this book be about more than its sensation? And also reading it in the context of Shriver’s other work, which I’ve become familiar with. Nearly halfway in, I am pleased to report that the work has been even more resonant the second time around. A certain poignancy is offered, reading in light of what has not yet been revealed. Eva’s character is easier understood, her tragedy more pointed. And I see also that while this is definitely Shriver’s most accomplished work to date, it is in no way a departure from her usual. In all her books, Shriver has a tremendous ability to make unattractive characters realistic, evocative and impossibly sympathetic, even as you want to punch them all the while. This time I also see that, as with Double Fault and The Post-Birthday World, Kevin is ultimately not about motherhood and murder as much as marriage.
