November 2, 2006
Joe saw me first
Joe saw me first, which wasn’t technically true because I’d seen him plenty before that. I knew him, but so did everyone, in that way a whole crowd knows a singer on the stage but no one expects him to know them back. Joe Brighton had been President of the Student Council the year before, when a radical group organized a sit-in at the Chancellor’s Office in protest of the Vietnam War and the university administration’s draconian authoritarianism. Rather unfashionably, Joe had condemned the students’ actions as irresponsible and ill-conceived, and he lent his support to a police raid that saw the protesters jailed. He’d stood up on behalf of mild-mannered, clean-cut boys everywhere, and even when the school paper pasted a headline over his face proclaiming him a fascist, you still had to admire his gumption. Joe’s council impeached him before his term was up, which only heightened his fame really. Felled politician though he was, Joe Brighton was six foot five and gorgeous, star forward of the Varsity Hockey Team, and when I used to take his order at the restaurant where I worked, I could hardly speak without a stammer.
November 2, 2006
Seen Reading
Bookninja links to Seen Reading, a wonderful blog tracking who’s reading what around town. I’ve gone through it looking for me, but there’s no sign yet.
November 1, 2006
Cat's Eye
Usually when I read marginalia from former academic selves of mine, it makes me want to gouge out my eyeballs. Particularly my high school self, which destroyed my Great Gatsby with banality, but my undergrad self was no treat either– the river, as I noted in The Diviners, “=life”. Now reading Cat’s Eye, which I’ve read a thousand other times. One of those times was 1998 for a course in my first year at university, and I highlighted all important passages in green highlighter. No idiot comments, fortunately, just the highlighter. It’s not so annoying actually, and this time, as I’ve made my own markings through it (which undoubtedly will make me want to kill myself in the future), I’ve become oddly conscious of some sort of dialogue with my former me. It’s sort of wonderful.
November 1, 2006
Trick or Treat?
Trick-or-treating was a smash! Highlights were various princesses and tigers who were too little to walk, and the boy in the noose who was “an emo kid”. Lowlights were the various boys in baggy pants who were “rappers”, and me asking another boy in baggy pants (an old biddy voice), “Are you a rapper too?” except he was a soccer player.
November 1, 2006
Books in the News
Okay, I admit I like the Guardian Books Blog. I just hope the bloggish articles don’t come to take the place of their regular books articles. On writing that first novel: “For years I was bogged down in the paraphernalia surrounding the writing of a novel–the specially sharpened pencil, the new notebook, just the right word processor. I eagerly hovered up snippets of information about how other people wrote their books as if hoping to discover a special secret that would enable me to write mine. With hindsight it is now clear that this hopelessly naive behaviour was a form of decades-long displacement activity that was actually preventing me from writing a novel, and that the only way to write a novel is indeed to write it, one painful word after another.” On giving children books for Christmas. On what reviewers should think according to publishers. Outside of the blog, on Penguins: you know, I don’t know if I like Penguin books because I like penguins, or if I like penguins because of the books. Alice Munro in The Guardian and in The Globe. Plath sonnet discovered.
Am devastated about Reese and Ryan.
October 31, 2006
Landed!
Today Stuart became a permanent resident of Canada! Here is a photo of my beloved, looking a little goofy. Congratulations to him.
October 29, 2006
Nothing to do with rainfall
Today I found out about the origins of bridal showers. Maybe you knew already; I didn’t. It’s a Dutch tradition, when the bride’s father rejects the marriage and then the community rallies together to “shower” her with goods in place of a dowry.
October 29, 2006
Book Showers!
Goodbye Without Leaving was my favourite Laurie Colwin novel yet. I read it with delight, and it managed to talk about big things in a way that sat easily. Her writing is strong, and she writes narrators that confound me with their utter unclassifiability. You should read Laurie Colwin. I mean you. She’s pretty likeable. Finished Nixon in China, which was a fascinating reading. MacMillan is so clever that she gets to impart gossip and call it scholarship, but of course there is more than that. Apart from Nixon’s trip itself, I learned so many things about the history of Taiwan, Nixon and Kissenger, diplomacy in general (the word “obsequious” kept coming up), and appreciated the Asian lessons, especially considering how much the region has been in the news lately. Now reading Atwood’s Survival to fill that gap in my CanLit knowledge. It’s a delight, actually, and I’m out to embark on an Atwood kick for academic reasons, featuring (for nonacademic reasons) her latest Moral Disorder so stay tuned!
October 29, 2006
Wedding news…
Susannah, my dearest cousin/friend, is getting married! And to a boy who is wonderful no less! They announced it yesterday over deep-friend clam strips. In further nuptials news, plans for Bronwyn’s wedding on the moors are well underway. Further, tomorrow I am picking up my altered bridesmaid dress for Katie’s, and hopefully it will fit.
October 29, 2006
Writing Tunes
When I write, I require silence or else music to block unsilenceable outside noise. When I listen to music while writing, I can only listen to one song on repeat, or possibly an extremely seamless album. The top ten most played songs on my itunes are as follows:
Feel Flows: The Beach Boys
Turn Me On: Kevin Lyttle
Helpless: Buffy Saint-Marie
She’s a Rainbow: The Rolling Stones
Crazy English Summer: Faithless
More Than This: Roxy Music
Sweet Thing: Van Morrison
Get Along With You: Kelis
Clocks: Coldplay
Tangled Up in Blue: Bob Dylan
