January 29, 2007
Cell One
Speaking of Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story “Cell One” is in the New Yorker this week and you can read it here. It’s wonderful.
January 29, 2007
Show and tell
Last week The Robber Bride TV movie was slagged off in the Globe, and I must voice my disagreement. The adaptation wasn’t flawless by any means, and I do wonder how the story was different for a man having joined the triumvirate which told so much about women’s relationships. Nevertheless. For two hours last Sunday night my husband and I sat together and thoroughly enjoyed a made-for-CBC movie and I consider this an unusual mark of great achievement.
Speaking of Ms. Atwood, her fine and illuminating piece in Saturday’s paper is here, regarding the federal government axing the promotion of Canadian arts abroad. Mix-Tape mania at The Observer. Today’s feature on violence in Nottingham (which was my home for a while) turns bookish in its reference to the 1958 novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe, and I’ve decided to read it soon. Q&A with the marvelous Sue Townsend. Canadians write great songs— Joni Mitchell in particular. Katrina Onstad concurs.
Why why why instead of actually governing has our government launched an idiotic attack upon its opposition? Please please please let’s not retaliate. Give Canadians some credit for intelligence, let this crap slide, and win favour with integrity and dignity.
Things Fall Apart was as powerful as they said. Oh my goodness the last chapter. And this book enlightened quite a few bits of the brilliant Half of a Yellow Sun.
Though the amazon link for this book is such a lesson in idiot reviewing. Can you imagine prefacing your review of a book like this with “As a writer myself…”? Some nerve. Virginia Woolf never even did that in her criticism, and unless you are Virginia Woolf, you probably shouldn’t either. (I googled said reviewer, and found a link to some of his “work” which was unsurprisingly a pile of crap.) Further, knocking Achebe for his failure to show instead of tell? Oh go puke on yourself. Really.
I’m beginning to sound irate. However it’s January, which is excuse enough, and I will be nicer tomorrow. Now I am going to read Rosemary’s Baby for a good dose of satnic action. Though if it tells instead of shows, I’m totally asking the public library for a refund.
January 28, 2007
Glimpses
There had to be something more than this, Gail knew. All around her, she was permitted glimpses of the most marvelous things— the tops of blooming gardens behind tall walls, a sudden pagoda in the midst of a residential block, orange fish swimming far below a layer of ice in the castle moat. A tall blue building the next street over, windowless and featureless, except for its shimmering neon sign. It was a pachinko parlour, Joe said, which was a gambling game, and if Gail ever walked by when someone was going in or out, she got a sense of the overwhelming light and sound inside until the doors shut again and that whole universe disappeared.
January 27, 2007
Dust…
Not just for fat fighting anymore.
Did you know that dust can now be used to fight global warming?
January 26, 2007
Notes on a Scandal
The Guardian Books Blog on books that make you talk to strangers. Whenever I see someone reading Unless, I want to tell them it’s my favourite book in all the world, though I don’t think I ever have. At my library job, however, I am compelled to let patrons know when I think the book they’ve selected is wonderful. And often lately, it has been Interpreter of Maladies or Small Island.
And books to read on trains. The great train reads of my life have been Slouching Towards Bethlehem on the shinkansen to Hiroshima; Various Miracles on the way to Osaka one afternoon (and I read the story “Scenes” whilst stopped at Amagasaki); when we lived in England, our train rides were usually passed with Sunday papers. And I don’t get to take the train anymore, but last year Sweetness in the Belly sure passed a bus journey from Toronto to Ottawa and back just fine.
An interview with Zoe Heller.
Now reading A Biographer’s Tale by AS Byatt, which was not well-regarded by the amazon reviewers, but I like it much so far. And the Public Library has called, with Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (we watched the movie last weekend; it was an obsession of mine in high school; I’m interested in the novel) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (my February classic). Once again, I suppose I can say I have all I need.
Except hair elastics. All of mine have disappeared.
January 26, 2007
Mmmm she says
President’s Choice Moroccan-Style Mint Green is the tea of choice of late.
January 25, 2007
I'm scared.
On my way through the Canadian Oxford Dictionary whilst searching for the exact definition of “eaves”, I note that in the entry under “Cummings”, Burton gets precedent over Edward Estlin (e.e.), which is very oh canada. And then I start to think about the Burton Cummings poetry I could recite in near-entirety (ie These Eyes, Share the Land, I’m Scared and Stand Tall etc.) vs what I know by e.e. (ie none) and I feel very very subeducated.
Upon investigation, I discover that Burton’s precedent is thanks to alphabetical order, and that biographical entries in the COD are not actually in order of greatness. Though perhaps the alphabet could be considered an order of greatness. I still like that Burton gets top billing though. And I wonder if he appears in any ODs outside of the C?
January 23, 2007
The Third Age
I was interested to see Margaret Drabble cited in the recent Macleans article “The 27 Year Itch” regarding late-life divorce for having coined the phrase “The Third Age” in her The Seven Sisters. On the digitalization of reading. Jenny Diski on compacting the classics, which is horrifyingly awful.
I’m now reading The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches to put a little Canadienne in my CanLit. And it’s wonderful. I came home from the library this morn also bearing Things Fall Apart and Youth.
January 23, 2007
In lieu of sensationalism.
Rather than religiously following Canada’s largest murder trial in all its grisly detail, may I suggest you instead read Missing Sarah by Maggie de Vries. I read this book last May, and it’s stayed with me since, and changed the way I think of both prostitution in general, and this court case. Maggie de Vries tells the story of her sister Sarah with such compassion and love, and instills her with the humanity she was so denied at the end of her life.
January 23, 2007
Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield tugs all the heartstrings in his memoir Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time. He writes an elegy for the 1990s: “Remember Brittany Murphy, the funny frizzy-haired, Mentos-loving dork in Clueless? By 2002, she was the hood ornament in 8 Mile, just another skinny starlet, an index of everything we’ve in that time”. His subtitular “loss” is the death of his wife Renee, who loved music as much as he does and died of a pulmonary embolism in 1997. And he tells the story of his life through mix tapes, one per chapter with full track listings– and even the shameful tracks.
In spite of the tugging, Sheffield surmounts bathos. He’s a good writer (contributing editor for Rolling Stone says his bio) and his material is appealing for anyone who grew up in and around the same era. More than an elegy for his wife, Sheffield writes a celebration of her life and the time they shared together, and it’s a joy to read. The book’s mix-tape chapter structure is fun, engaging and inspiring. There is a certain High Fidelityness to it all, but without the pretension. Rob Sheffield doesn’t seem to take himself or his music too seriously, in spite of making a career of it.
Because music is music after all. After his wife’s death, Hanson came out with “MmmBop” and Sheffield regretted that she would never know it, because as cool as she was, it was a song they would have loved together. In the chapter “The Comfort Zone”, he uses a “dishes tape” to tell the tales of domesticity. He taped most of it off Casey Kasem’s American Top-40 countdown, including The KLF/Tammy Wynette with “Justified and Ancient”, Kris Kross “Jump’, “I’m Too Sexy” and “Baby Got Back”. Etc. Also featured was Tom Cochrane “Life is a Highway”: “Tom Cochrane had nothing to say, plus a stupid way of saying it, but he helped me get the dishes done.” “A Little Down, A Little Duvet”, a mix Renee made to fall asleep to at night (and the chapter in which they get married) contains Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing”, which is my favourite song in the world. These guys were cool. Sheffield writes about the grunge and 1993, when “the music we loved had blown up nationwide”. But then his mix from that time also includes Tag Team and and Lucinda Williams. And I like that.
He doesn’t get all up on new technology either, as might be expected. Though the cassette holds nostalgic appeal for Sheffield, he uses the term “mix tape” figuratively (though he’s certainly not the only one who does that). He welcomed the advent of the recordable CD, admits to loving his iPod “carnally”. But it’s the “romance” of the mix tape, and those of us with cardboard box-fulls of the stuff packed down in the basements of our past can certainly understand that. “The rhythm of a mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies… Love is a mix tape” says Rob Sheffield, and his thesis convinced me.
I loved his book like a souvenir of a good time.
