March 1, 2006
Mardi Gras
Well, all is well with the world because Heather Mallick is back!. And we just returned from a wonderful Pancake Day fiesta chez SH that put the fat back in Fat Tuesday.
February 27, 2006
Cupcake
Isn’t it weird that the very day I vow never to buy The Globe and Mail ever again, Leah McLaren opts out of the blogosphere? She is tired, she writes, of
bitter unpublished writers venomously slagging published ones — their terrible spelling, poorly constructed sentences and outrageous amounts of displaced hatred and envy a testimony to why they became bloggers in the first place.
I am just tired of the worst Saturday paper I’ve ever read (and I used to read The Asahi Shimbun so that’s saying something). I guess it’s The Guardian Online for me then!
Last night I got drunk and ordered Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess off amazon used. It was an act of impetuosity and spendthriftery, but I have wanted this book for many years and I am confident that it will change my entire life. Will keep you posted.
Ottawa was brilliant! And cold. Thursday, we went to the Parliament Buildings and Sparks Street, and had a wonderful dins etc. with Sues and Lo. On Friday, we went out for lunch, went to the Ottawa Nicholas Hoare, spent the whole day at the Art Gallery, ate Beaver Tails, froze our bums, went out for a wonderful dinner and drinks and lived like the rich. Saturday was a blizzard and awful, so we didn’t leave the house but the four of us were quite compatible, and spent a pleasant Saturday listening to music, watching Little Britain, reading, cooking and enjoying excellent company. We came home this morning, and we’re entirely sick of busses. Oh, but for the love mini breaks. It was brilliant.
February 26, 2006
Sweetness in the Belly
I am not proud that I don’t read a lot of international fiction- a sad fact that limits me as a reader, a writer, and a human being. I can think of a few translations I’ve read during the past while, so I am not the uberculprit- however I must admit that sometimes I find books in translation awkward to read, and that the “novel” form can vary so much that novels from other cultures do not always deliver what I look for in a book. I don’t always read the books that I “should” read, because life is little and I read for pleasure. And there is my defense, but in short, I am a bit ashamed of it all.
So there it stands, but today I did finish reading Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb. And whadda book, oh my goodness. I closed it finally with such a surge of teary-eyed joy and sadness. If you have ever wanted to read a book, read this one. Full stop. It is a thing of beauty, an educative tool, a small-world maker and a pleasure to read. Camilla Gibb is a Canadian writer who did extensive field work in Ethiopia during the 1990s. She has created a masterpiece, the story of Lilly, a white Muslim woman living in the Ethiopian city of Harar during the 1970s. The story goes back and forth between her life there, and her “present” in 1980s London. You wouldn’t call Gibb the Bob Geldof of the literary set (less histrionics) but her story made Africa and Ethiopia real to me like nothing else ever has before. Lilly- the inside outsider- made the story so accessible. She was my portal into that world, and I so appreciated the opportunity. What a fascinating literary device- one that must be in amazingly adept hands in order to be fully effective. And oh yes, it is.
None of this means I don’t still suck- I just feel a little more awake than I did before.
February 23, 2006
My brilliant friends
I’m fortunate to have met some incredibly brilliant friends in my time (like say Erin or Mike, not to mention those who don’t maintain weblogs). I would like to introduce another of my amazing comrades, Ms. Natalie Bay. We met about four years ago while both working as tour guides in Ottawa, right before I moved to England. We met up again about two years after that as we were both working in Japan at the same time, though at that point Natalie was finishing up the Nippon life and on her way to live in England. Good news is that we’re getting together next week, but also that her website is wonderful. She is a very talented photographer, as her photos of Ghana and Japan will attest. Plus, the Japanese pictures bring back some beautiful memories.
In other wonderful people news (anyone tell I’ve been into the wine?) we had such a lovely dinner downstairs with Curtis. He’s a great guy, and cooked us a good meal. He and Stuart get along really well (they’re still down there) and I think we’re really lucky to have him for a neighbour. We’ve decided to make our dinner fetes-semi regular.
See you apres Ottawa. My cousin’s boyfriend is French Canadian and I have an appalling tendency to desecrate his language constantly in his presence. Il m’embrasse avec la lange mais je n’ais pas les sentiments pour lui. Indeed.
February 22, 2006
The reader becomes a maniac
I’ve been very into marathon reading this year (which is why I’ve read 27 books already this year!) because I love the idea of a book in a sitting. Unfortunately I read Fight Club in one sitting last night, and it had a terrible effect upon my personality. Now I am impressionable at the best of times: I can’t watch Law and Order without becoming terribly argumentative, upon CSI the whole world is a potential crime scene, I remember walking out after “Coyote Ugly” (that in itself embarrassing) and feeling quite sure that indeed I couldn’t “fight the moonlight”. And after Fight Club, which was a foray into darkness and the dark crept under my skin, I was reasonably sure I was harboring split personalities and me cannon got a bit loose if you know what I am saying. Once I put it all down to over-susceptibility, I felt a bit better but it was still a little bizarre. I think I need to read an Archie comic as an antidote.
Today is down to laundry, essay research, rewriting my Monica Lang poem, and baking a cake for dinner at our downstairs neighbours tonight. And still counting down to the mini-break.
February 22, 2006
Minibreak Countdown!
Bookishy, I enjoyed this article by a school librarian, about the importance of “Weeding, culling, planting and reaping” book collections, just like a garden. I definitely found that to be the case when I sold over 150 books at a sale this July, and gave away many more. My library seemed healthier as a result, and of course it cleared the way for new growth.
Leah McLaren’s latest feud continues with this apology in The Star for the pretty awful review they published of her new book. And a new Scandal in Bookland!! Apparently a lot of Zadie Smith’s fictional White Teeth was MADE UP OF LIES!
Today I read One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty. Now I am going to start Fight Club, which Stuart has been urging upon me for three and a half years. And I am very much enjoying Woolf in Ceylon, but it will be slow going because it’s too heavy to take out of the house. In other exciting news, Robbie Williams’ Greatest Hits have found their way into my possession!
And Thursday morn we’re off to Ottawa for three wonderful days. And though busses are a poor second to trains, I am very much looking forward to being en-route with Stuart. We journey well together, him and I, no matter where we’re going. And we’ve gone a bit mad with snax for the road and magazines (the Vanity Fair is SO boob-laden, it’s gross!) but you’ve got to pass ten hours somehow. And we’ll stay with my cousin and her boyfriend, and it will just be so nice to be somewhere new. And while we’re there, I am not going to think about school work at all!
February 19, 2006
reading week reading
How exciting! More books in the post. There is no better excuse than “I need it for my class, dear” to be able to buy a new book. Even if it’s a new used book. I am getting Servants of the Map by Andrea Barrett and it looks intriguing. I have read Walden, The Writing Life by Annie Dillard, finished After the Victorians and am halfway through Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I also started Woolf in Ceylon by Christopher Ondaatje. My reading will go all periodical come Thursday, when we’re off on a five hour bus journey to Ottawa. No better excuse than that to buy the new naked Vanity Fair.
February 18, 2006
Vegetable Love
Some part of me is surprised that I have never, in any book, encountered the sentence, “He was hung like a sweet potato”.
February 16, 2006
I'm thinking about my bookstand
I went shopping today with one mother of a gift certificate that’s been hanging around for a freezing-rainy day/clearance sale. And I finally got a book stand! I find there aren’t nearly enough book accessories out there (and book lights are so passe) so I was happy to indulge here. And so this means now I can read and knit at the same time! All I need is an electronic page turner.
I also got Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb, The Accidental by Ali Smith, The Photograph by Penelope Lively, Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale for Stuart, the new UTNE and this from the bargain bin. And three dollars change.
In other book news, I am getting through “The Decline of Britain in the World” a chapter a day. And I am also reading Walden. There is a massive stack of non-fic beside my bed as well. Thank goodness it’s reading week is all I can say.
Lisa Moore’s Alligator was certainly “a new kind of fiction” as the tagline promised. I’ve never read anything like it before. Woolf talked of the mulitudinous impressions we take in of life around us, and how a challenge of modern fiction should be “recording the atoms as they fall”. Alligator comes closer to that than anything I’ve read lately. Moore talks about her writing style in this interview. She says, “I want to break the parameters of what the reader expects is coming. So, if we’re talking about any given sentence, I want the sentence to end in a way that the reader is not expecting. I want the paragraph to end and begin and be something the reader is not expecting. But also be inevitable. If there is a golden rule, that’s it. If the reader knows where you’re going, there’s no point in reading that sentence; they’ll just skip it. It’s not for the sake of being avant-garde that I want it to be unexpected. It’s because I think a real engagement with a book means that the reader has to chase after the story. Their imagination has to be working, and it’s the energy that’s expended by the imagination at work that is the pleasure of reading. If they know what’s happening, then there’s no pleasure.” I recommend this book very highly, even just as an example of innovative technique.
