May 11, 2007
Friday morning
Zadie Smith has a short story in The New Yorker. They’re going on about novel first lines over at The Guardian Books Blog; I was pleased that my personal favourite was noted (“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York”). And we’re away to Peterborough this weekend (the ultimate tourist destination). It’s a long weekend too, because we made it that way. Tra-la.
Oh, and log on now to Diggerland.com.
May 10, 2007
Stories in the Air
What a treat was mine this eve, as my fairy godmother had delivered me her ticket to the Kama Readings; she couldn’t attend. And so I went in her place, and saw/listened to Camilla Gibb, David Adams Richards, Thomas King and M.G. Vassanji. The readings were an absolute pleasure. Gibb read from Sweetness in the Belly (my favourite book of 2006); Richards read a beautiful passage from The Friends of Meager Fortune; King and Vassanji both read short stories from recent collections. I do like to sit and listen– it is a test for me, as anyone who has ever been interrupted by me would surely realize. It requires effort, but I always feel wonderful after– like I’ve been working a muscle. And I like the idea of readings, of stories in the air. The ones floating about were certainly wonderful tonight.
Now reading A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor. The man in the elevator today examined my cover (quite forcefully), and said “You’ve got to love the Irish”. I really didn’t know what to tell him. Coming up: Poppy Shakespeare and then The Girls— both popular novels whose premises have kept me shying away, but I’m finally too curious. And I’m still reading Stephanie Nolen’s 28 Stories of Aids of Africa which is amazingly captured, and I’m slowly working through.
David Adams Richards amused everyone tonight with his story of the time he set his hair on fire. Guffaws all around. Though some of you will remember why my laughter was very much in sympathy. He, however, did not set his aflame at karaoke.
May 9, 2007
The Ladies' Lending Library by Janice Kulyk Keefer
I wanted to know that “beach read” and “literary” weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. I wanted a book that spelled summer, but didn’t make my head go numb. And I was so pleased that Janice Kulyk Keefer’s new novel The Ladies’ Lending Library lived up to expectations, satisfied my impossible desires. Here is a summer book through and through, all the while substantial, well-written, and I would recommend that you pack it along this season, no matter where you’re going.
But particularly if you’re off to Cottage Country, which would be fitting. The Ladies’ Lending Library is the story of a group of Ukrainian-Canadian families who spend summers together up on Georgian Bay, and it explores the curious intimacies which emerge in this kind of community. Cottageness is captured vividly– waves pound the beach throughout the novel, whole days spent in the sunshine, fathers at the weekend, rotting wooden steps and slapdash suppers. The story takes place during the summer of 1963 (as does Ian McEwan’s new On Chesil Beach, and I look forward to seeing how these books relate). 1963– before the Beatles, before Kennedy was shot, when everybody called Baby “Baby” and it didn’t occur to her to mind. Such a cusp would be rife with stories, and Kalyna Beach is no exception. Dissatisfied mothers, wandering eyes, immigrant experiences which permeate the present, the perils of puberty, adolescent humiliation, sex, sex, and the contemplation of sex, trashy magazines, breasts, and the foxy sixteen year old in a bikini who is the object of everybody’s fascination.
My one criticism of this book would be its title, which is misleading. The lending library of which it speaks is an official-sounding excuse for the mothers of Kalyna Beach to meet weekly and exchange trashy novels, but is hardly at the forefront of this book. Though the ladies themselves are central to the plot, such a title undermines the Kulyk Keefer’s broad narrative range. The sweeping points of view throughout the novel are one of its most interesting elements, incorporating the daughters’ perspectives alongside their mothers’. Though the men in the story are given their say, female voices are much more present. And I enjoyed the seamlessness as one perspective worked its way into the next, and how the female characters, of such various ages and experiences, were thus linked.
I am grateful that a novel of “women’s concerns”, and with subject matter so beachy, could be so thoughtfully treated and well-written. These are stories which deserve to be told well. Kulyk Keefer writes such beautiful descriptions, sympathetic characters, and realistic situations (however heart-wrenching or amusing). Like any book you want for the beach, this one is a pleasure, but moreover you’re better for having read it. The ending is particularly perfect. “And she wants to shower them with rose petals, to rush down to the dock to wave them off on their reckless, needy journey into possiblity.” So did I.
I closed this book quite satisfied.
(Note that for a last minute Mother’s Day gift, this would be a fine pick! )
May 8, 2007
Hollaring Comrade
The girl walking across Queen’s Park shedding tears over the death of a man in a book? She would be me. And that book (84 Charing Cross Road) was absolutely lovely.
PS- Anyone know what “book post” is? It sounds like the most wonderful system in the whole world.
UPDATE: Someone has made an 84 Charing Cross Road website!
May 8, 2007
In my bag
Today 84 Charing Cross Road came in for me at the library (on Claire G’s recommendation). A bookish book! I am looking forward. I also brought home The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield to reread “At the Bay”, to which Janice Kulyk Keefer acknowledges her debt in The Ladies Lending Library. Stay tuned for a review tomorrow of that book, by the way. And I am now much intrigued to read Kulyk Keefer’s overtly Mansfieldian Thieves. Oh books books books. Thank heaven I plan to live for a long long time.
May 7, 2007
Final Shift
Tomorrow morning I will work my final shift at the library— five years after the last time I worked my final shift at the library. I think this time I mean it, however, as I don’t foresee myself returning to school anytime soon (or ever again), and it’s time I moved on from student assistantship. But I am going to miss it so. To be paid to walk up and down shelves and shelves of books. When I worked there as an undergraduate, I found “shelf-reading” quite tedious– reading call number after call number for about a half hour each shift to make sure the books were in their right places. But on my second run, I delighted in it. To run my thumb along the shelf and give a little attention to books no one has touched in years, the obscure volumes and authors Woolf’s essays taught me such an appreciation for, to return wayward books to where they belong, to blow the dust off. I loved shelving, and filling in the gaps. I never came up from the stacks without a stack of my own to take home. I liked working at circulation, where my duty was to be handed books (what a dream!). Checking books out, and imagining the connection between the book and its borrower. I revelled in Special Collections– I got to shelf the Woolf Collection when the library moved in 2001, and that I have touched these rare, beautiful volumes, books that SHE touched, is one of the penultimate features of my life. Today I held in my hands a book that had belonged to Coleridge and Wordsworth, and that was just an ordinary day.
I was not meant to be a librarian for innumerable reasons, but I do harbour dreams that the career ahead of me be bookish, however so, because then no day could ever truly be ordinary. There is no other object I’ve ever known that is invested with the magic of the book.
May 7, 2007
Park Life
It is hard to reconcile the inherent rubbishness of the world with weekends like this one. Oh weekends, you are the one thing that makes me pleased to be back in the workaday life. Though as a student/housewife every day was the weekend, that sort of took away the very point of it. And this weekend was extremely pointful. We went out for sushi and ice cream Friday night with Erica and Alex, which was splendid. Saturday we did our Kensington shop, which was a sweet summer dream. Saturday afternoon was a bike ride to High Park where we sprawled on our blanket all afternoon, ate strawberries, read books, and later I climbed a tree. The park was fullsville but the wonderful thing about parks is that we all share that wonderful space. It really was splendid, and nice to get the bikes out of the garage for the first time all season. Today Stuart was doing boyish things with other boyish types, and I was writing writing. The marvelous Natalie Bay came for supper, which was great. She’s just come back from Japan and brought us omiyage– pnis shaped cookies. I’d post a picture, but this is not that sort of blog.
I’m adjusting to my new life, and so reading/blogging have been slow of late. Though I’m working on two books at the moment: 28 Stories of Aids in Africa by Stephanie Nolen, and The Ladies Lending Library by Janice Kulyk Keefer (and there ain’t a better book for a summer’s day).
May 3, 2007
Orwell's Eleven Golden Rules of Tea
Today I was directed toward George Orwell’s essay A Nice Cup of Tea. This is serious business. He begins, “When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden.” I was intrigued by his assertion that drinking Indian tea makes one feel “wiser, braver and optimistic.” Interestingly, apparently Chinese tea doesn’t have the same effect.
May 2, 2007
Catch
Where I Was From by Joan Didion is the best book by Joan Didion I have ever read. This is no small praise. Yes, The Year of Magical Thinking came with a sentimentality creeping in which humanized Didion and I appreciated that, but reading Where I Was From I realize that she is at her very best when cold and watching. It’s the connections she draws which make her work so powerful, and I love the way she leaves us to do with them what we will. Or at least the way she seems to let us do what we will, for her words are so calculated, her logic so exact, that even when I disagree with what she is saying, I cannot help but see her point of view.
I am now reading The Fifth Child on the advice of Heather Mallick. Intriguing, apparently not typical Lessing, and much akin to We Need To Talk About Kevin, which was my best book of 2005 (and which I’ll be rereading this summer).
Last night I cried upon realizing that my days have suddenly become much shorter, which is the power of an eight hour workday. This was devastating to contemplate, as there I was aiming to finish Where I Was From, write the end to a stubborn short story, post an entry on Divisadero, and bake cupcakes all before bedtime. How I will miss my grad student/housewife days, where all of that was possible, and hours and hours more were open wide, and I was still free to cavort with the postman every morning, and read and write all day long. But then I got to work this morning and remembered that I’ve got a pretty lovely gig for the next few months, my coworkers are wonderful, I can ride my bike to get there, the work is (sometimes) interesting. More good things were underlined as we went outside to play catch at lunch time.
And so all is well, and time enough there will be. I suppose also that eight hours a day of wages will make evenings and weekends a delight.
