July 25, 2006
Hey, that's my (husband's) bike!
To the thief, then. Yeah, you with the wire clippers in the back pocket of your skinny jeans. All right then, take the bike. Steal it right off the porch with a guile I cannot fathom. I just hope you ride it under the wheels of a speeding bus. And you just keep on stealing bikes, again and again, rendering our porches eternally barren. But you will never manage to steal the bikes that live in our hearts; our inner bikes. The truest bikes, which you, of course you dirty bastard, will never ever know.
(Bonus points to whoever got my Reality Bites reference.)
July 23, 2006
Wknd
My story A Big Enough Army won second place in the 2006 Toronto Star Short Story contest, and is online today!
We’re in Peterborough this weekend, and I met up with friends today who I hadn’t seen in years, from when I used to be a delinquent. And in the most exciting news of all, the most wonderfully bookish woman alive (my friend Bronwyn) is getting married. Oh how the tears have been flowing. I am slowly regaining self-control.
July 22, 2006
Bookish News
Glee! Margaret Drabble’s new novel gets a great review in The Guardian. It comes out in Britain in August. Tragically, it’s not out in Canada until October. But I’ll be ok. On reading the right books in the right places. On how the middle class is letting down the public library.
July 20, 2006
Rainbow Styley
Listening to BBC Radio 1 every day has reawakened me to pop music, and I’m on quite a musical bent at the moment. I just bought “Let’s Get Out of This Country” by Camera Obscura, and I continue to adore my last purchase, “The Garden” by Zero 7. In terms of singles, I love Happiness by Orson, Eleanor Put Your Boots On by Franz Ferdinand, All This Love by the Similou, America by Razorlight and Fill My Little World by The Feeling. Oh and the Paris Hilton single. Really.
Just cycled home from Ward’s Island, where we were guests at a house party. How lucky is that? It’s a beautiful evening.
July 17, 2006
On Watermelon
The website of the evening is www.watermelon.org– the online home of the National Watermelon Promotion Board. We are now devouring watermelon smoothies. And obviously, we are now quite happy.
I got In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction from the library today. I am approaching it for a few reasons; the first is that Annie Dillard wrote the intro entitled “Notes for Young Writers”. Some of the best advice I’ve ever read, pointed and concise enough to be manageable. I like “Read for pleasure… Push it a little, but don’t read something totally alien to your nature and then say, “I’ll never be able to write like that.” Of course you won’t. Read books you’d like to write. If you want to write literature, read literature. Write books you’d like to read. Follow your own weirdness.” I’d recommend thumbing through this book even just for this. The book itelf I might not even read, but I am going to give it a try. It will be interesting to compare it to the anthology I read last week, wherein my complaint was of the forced nature of the pieces. This anthology, on the other hand, was compiled after the fact, and it will be interesting to see if this makes a difference. I am also interested in Creative Nonfiction, and confess a bit to not really knowing what it is, and so it will be nice to learn.
And yes, the book came from the library; I am absolutely obsessed with the Toronto Public Library. In the town where I grew up, the library was underfunded, seemed to be closed four days a week and only open until 3:30 when it was at all, and was fundamentally unwelcoming. In years since, I’ve revelled in university libraries, which definitely have their good points but are overwhelming in their austerity. And then there is the library around the corner from my house, which has the ugliest carpet known to man and plenty of Catherine Cookson, but some really great works scattered about, is open late, has nice staff and I can request any book from the Toronto Public Library system be delivered there just for me! I was stupified to learn that such a process was even possible. I feel quite lucky to be able to benefit from it.
Via Bookninja, I read Misery Loves a Memoir: “Contemporary memoirists have taught us mostly how to survive. They haven’t begun to teach us how to live.” I am currently listening to a great podcast, Zadie Smith on On Beauty. She is a brilliant speaker, in terms of how she sounds and what she says.
July 16, 2006
Here and There
The Star Short Story Contest First Prize Winner is published here today. My story appears next week. I bought the Toronto Life Summer Fiction Issue yesterday, lured by Joan Barfoot and Margaret Atwood. Unfortunately, it’s the last Fiction Issue- a sad state of affairs discussed here. Prince Edward County profiled here. The List-Loving Observer gives us 50 Albums that changed music.
July 14, 2006
Mountain Top
It has been a week of high points. Because after twelve and a half months and a whole lot of trouble, my husband received his visa, and is therefore eligible to work in Canada. It’s just a temporary work permit until his permanent residency is completed (which might take another year) and he still can’t leave the country, but we won’t quibble. He is now looking for a job.
I was a bit disappointed with the anthology The Friend Who Got Away, but perhaps my problem is more with anthologies in general than this specific book. The high points first- there are a few absolutely wonderful essays here, writing by Katie Roiphe and Ann Hood was particularly good. A few essays made me extraordinarily uncomfortable, but perhaps they were supposed to. But in all, this book did not meet my expectations. I think the problem with a book such as this is that writers respond to the topic, rather than the topic responding to the writing, and consequently, some of the stories seemed forced. There is the problem, as in all anthologies of late (and anthologies are very much of late), of how boring it is to listen to privileged women whine. Further, each piece is so liminal, so brief. Perhaps each of these stories could be a book in itself, but as an essay, they seem to skim a surface; like an “It Happened To Me” section of a women’s magazine. I just didn’t feel like this book taught me anything, and didn’t really give me much to empathize with either.
July 12, 2006
You'd hide in a place that reminded you of hair?
On the obituary writers conference. Here for a library love story. On how technology tests our archives. I especially liked the 1986 BBC Archives contained on laser disc. And perhaps my favourite McSweeneys Pop Song Correspondences ever- Notes on “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” as Delivered to Axl Rose by His Editor. You won’t be sorry.
