#56 - No Country For Old Men

There's something about Cormac McCarthy's attention to the sparseness of punctuation and sentence structure that works exceptionally well in No Country for Old Men. It's as if one comma would ruin the flow of the language and pull your attention away from how the characters' voices are conceptualized. And I'm consistently amazed at how he manages to ensure the flow of dialogue without quotations, or truly, any way of knowing who's speaking beyond the voices you create for them in your own head.

As a youngish man goes for hunting in the back country near the Rio Grande, he discovers the spoils of a drug deal gone bad: lots of product, even more money. Leaving the product and picking up the cash, Llewelyn Moss turns around and makes his way out of the back country. He gets back in his truck, and drives home to his bride, who's but a wisp older than sixteen.

[And I'm paraphrasing]

She drawls, "What's in the bag"

"A pile of money."

And at that moment, whether they know it or not, their lives change forever.

The blunt force trauma of this story follows as such: Llewelyn, having stolen the money from an active drug cartel, is hunted down by the killer Anton Chigurh on one side of the law and by the old-time police chief Ed Tom Bell on the other. Seen from either direction, the story is sure as sh*t not going to come down in the favour of poor Lleweyln, nor is it going to turn out alright for Carla Jean, his wife. The chase on either side is brutal, dedicated, bloody and violent as hell.

It's hard to say but I'm not sure if there's a living writer (non-Canadian) that I admire these days as much as McCarthy—but only, truly, for these latest few books. All the Pretty Horses, with its majestic first sentence, as I've said here before, remains one of my all-time favourite books. Now, as you know, I was completely captivated by The Road. But No Country For Old Men blew me away. No one writes violence like McCarthy, and turns something that's often mocked in the popular media, or blown out in ways that ensure any impact of it gets lost between big guns and lots of useless fake punches, into literature.

The character of Ed Tom, the local police chief charged with not only unraveling the mystery of all the dead drug dealers, but also attempting to find Llewelyn before he's got no life left to live, remains a moral compass behind the entire book. Each chapter begins with a long, almost internal section from his point of view, where you can truly see how the country has started to make the changes into society as we know it today. It's a very particular vantage point, sitting on the cusp just before the world completely changes, and he seems bittersweet at best when coming to terms with the end of his life.

Ed Tom, as with many of the characters, acts stoically when faced with a situation that seems quite simply beyond the grasp of what everyday life prepares you for. The novel openly contemplates the idea that a secret, life lesson, sense of karma, or fairness itself will truly be obliterated by the sheer force of the universe. So much of the narrative plays out this philosophical ideal by the scenes of truly brutal violence, but also in the sheer fact that, as McCarthy proposed in his Oprah interview, some people are simply born luckier than others.

Of course I'm preparing myself for the movie adaption. By all accounts it's apparently bloody brilliant, the Coen brothers at their finest, but I still think the story will lose something that only the inner workings of Ed Tom's mind can relay. So before everyone heads out during Oscar season to work out their picks, I highly recommend reading this book before thoughts of Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin fill up your imagination.

Oh, and there's a slight error in the cover copy that bugged me all through the book, it says something along the lines of 'set in our modern time' or something when it's actually a period piece (to an extent). The book actually takes place in the early 1980s (or just 1980), which is just another reason to pay homage to McCarthy's talents as he doesn't have to come right out and say this, but it's totally inferred by the cars the characters drive and the technology they use.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I left the book up north and feel very strongly that it belongs in the cottage library (should there ever truly be one), and so I'm posting a photo of the moon on the night I finished reading the novel. I'm telling you, as lame as my picture is, it was one of the most beautiful moons I had ever seen. I stood outside and took a dozen pictures trying to find just one that captured the tenor of the clouds and the songs of the night, and honestly think I failed—but I sure hope you get the picture.

Quick Updates On The Fly Redux

We've been back from up north for a week and it flew by so fast that I haven't had time to blog but here's a list of things to come this week:

1. Book reviews of "Life on the Refrigerator Door," "No Country for Old Men," (the book, not the movie), "Bel Canto," "Little Men," and Per Peterson's "Out Stealing Horses," which I am about twenty pages away from finishing.

2. Thoughts on a few movies like "3:10 to Yuma" and a couple leftover summer flicks like Bourne and Potter.

3. I'm gearing up for all kinds of classes: dance classes, novel writing classes, yoga classes...

4. I want to dish about the new freelance assignment.

5. I finished my latest Classic Start and handed in my manuscript over the long weekend. Now I'm back to writing my own story and need to start in with serious revisions.

Whew. There's so much going on that I don't even know where to start.

Mad Men

Just a quickie post to say that I am utterly engrossed by Mad Men. I love the attention to detail, the wonderful period costumes and situations, the brilliant dialogue, and the bloody fascinating 'ad men'. It's not reaching Flight of the Conchords-levels in terms of the actual obsession, but it's a good, solid drama to take up the place of the bloody awful Grey's Anatomy that I have now permanently broken up with and will not reunite with this fall under any circumstances.

I am going to desperately try to limit the amount of television I watch this TV season. I found watching more movies (even older ones, shocking, I know for those of you who know me, non-virtually) and picking up more books this summer because we've been away from the television has actually been a really positive thing in my life.

It's a battle I have constantly, the TV-no TV argument, and I can see both sides, but then I sit down and get sucked into a world like the one they've created in Mad Men and think, wow, this is a hundred times better than a) that terrible Halle Berry film that the RRHB downloaded for me that I watched on Sunday in a computer coma and b) more engaging than half the films we watched this weekend, yes Fracture, I'm looking at you—while trying to ignore the obvious heat resonating from Ryan Gosling.

And Ethan, yum. And Ethan, ohhh.

#55 - Divisadero

Like so many of these reviews, sometimes it's necessary to start with a confession. There are no limits to my admiration for Michael Ondaatje's work. He's one of my favourite living writers. In the Skin of the Lion remains one of my all-time favourite books, right up there in the top ten at least. One night, when I was still slaving away at the worst job ever, even before I ended up at the evil empire with the boss from hell, I managed to get a free ticket to hear him read at Harbourfront. That night inspired me in ways that few other readings ever have. I came home, haunted by the sound of his voice, and wrote a prose poem called "Bittersweet". When I showed it to a creative writing teacher who actually knew Ondaatje, she sent him a copy, and I've still got the note he sent back—in fact, the thin scrawl telling her it was a 'lovely piece' sits on my desk to this day.

It's hard then to critique Divisadero from any where other than the pedestal of this affection I feel for a man I have clearly never met. The pure skill he has in crafting every single sentence, of creating characters that are broken and blue even before they are born, and of drawing a reader in as purely as one craves the sun, are uncompromising in this novel, even if the book itself might not necessarily be as successful as either The English Patient or In the Skin of a Lion. But how am I judging the success of the book? Much like Kerry, I felt a little bit lost as the tenuous threads of the novel hold two very different, yet equally complex stories together.

The first half of the story deals with how a tragic act of violence breaks up a patched together family in northern California. The two girls, Anna and Claire, sisters in every way except blood, are split apart forever, and Coop, a farm-hand who grew up on the farm since he was four, is chased away from the only home he has ever known. As they splinter, the novel removes itself from their primary narrative, and unfolds into the story of a Lucien Segura, a French writer at the turn of the century, who Anna studies as she lives in his house and sleeps with his neighbour (who he had known when he was just a boy, obviously), and whose tragedies (the loss of a great love, the splintering of family) echo those of her own.

Yet, by the end, I craved more about Coop, Anna, and Claire, somehow knowing that might be the point, that there was no more of this story for me to know. That the author, in firm control at all times, needed to explore tragedy in a different light halfway around the world from where he began, realizing that these are common themes that hold humanity together: loss, love, language. And wondering how it all fits together in ways that might not make entire sense to me right now, might just be the very point that I'm missing.

Regardless, it's a bloody beautiful book with prose that soars and touches you in ways that only he knows how to do, where prose melts with poetry, where longing remains far after the love has passed, and where two entirely different stories, narratives, and characters can fit together in one book as if they had meant to be that way all along.

I've added Michael Ondaatje to my Around the World in 52 Books challenge as the Sri Lanka entry, regardless of the fact that this book is set mainly in California and in France, and he's lived in Canada for over 40 years, that's where he was born, and those are the self-imposed rules of my challenge. Maybe that's wrong of me to organize the challenge in that way but I've started it along those lines and am committed to finishing!

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I love the photo on the cover of this book so much that taking another picture of a book on my bed wouldn't be remotely as interesting as imagining the woman lying there on a bench in an old French kitchen, bread, cheese, tea, pen nearby, creating a world that I am as desperate to know as any I have imagined in my reading life.

Californication

So I Faux-voed the first two episodes of Showtime's new "comedy" Californication (wherein the only indication of the supposed genre must be in the fact that it's got the half-hour running time). Partially washed up yet still brilliant, Hank Moody suffers from writer's block and calls himself a one-hit wonder. His celebrated work of literary fiction is turned into some Hollywood dreck starring Tom and Katie (aren't we all tired of that joke?), and this seems to have stopped him in his tracks from putting pen to paper entirely. So, he has sex. Lots of it. With anything that walks and waxes.

And if it wasn't for David Duchovny, the show would be a complete disaster. Yet, he manages to pull it all together, wounding his way through scene after scene totally messing up his life, trying to get his partner back (Natasha McElhone), and being a semi-decent dad to his precocious twelve-year-old daughter. But so much of this show is just plain tired, and I get frustrated when I see full-on scenes cribbed from much better work (anyone who has seen episode two and watched Lovely and Amazing knows of what I speak), and tired cliches (man sleeping with underage girl and then realizing his mistake, yawn) trotted out with more swearing and better shot nudity to be "dangerous."

On the whole, I'm giving it two more episodes to find some kind of heart, because as great as Duchovny remains solid and utterly watchable with the tired material surrounding him (his dry wit and even toastier delivery are truly engaging), there still needs to be an emotional core to the series that's sort of missing right now. Who knows? Maybe I'm the one who is jaded and frustrated and taking it all out on an innocent television show. All I know is that it's no Flight of the Conchords. Now there's comedy. Ummm, Steve.

#54 - October

When Richard B. Wright's Clara Callan won both the Governor General's Award and the Giller in 2001, I devoured it like the rest of Canada, in one fell swoop sitting on the world's most uncomfortable couch in our old apartment with its fabulous windows and loud College Street traffic. The novel both inspired and saddened me, with its echoes of A Bird in the House, and its epistolary format, which just seemed to work, Clara Callan haunted me for years.

Fast-forward many seasons and I've just had my hip surgery. Zesty's utterly wonderful mum gave me a copy of Adultery. And maybe I shouldn't have read it then because sometimes when you expect an author to write the same book twice, it's more your fault than theirs when you're disappointed. Right?

Regardless, I'm thrilled, thrilled to say that October, Wright's latest novel coming out in a few weeks, has me enthralled all over again. It's a short, tightly written book about James Hillyer, a retired professor (of literature, natch), who learns that his daughter, the headmistress of a prestigious girls' school in England, has aggressive breast cancer—the very same disease that killed her mother around the same age. When Hillyer flies to England to see her, he runs into Gabriel Fontaine, an old friend from childhood.

Hillyer drifts with swift strokes down memory lane as he describes his friendship with Gabriel during the summer he spent with his uncle at a resort town in Quebec: the rivalry he felt towards the boy despite the latter being wheelchair bound because of polio; the love he felt for Odette, a French-Canadian maid and Gabriel's girlfriend; and the coming of age he endures in that moment when he realizes that wealth and privilege will always allow for a certain latitudes that James can never experience. All these themes and events swell together and capture that feeling of childhood, you know when you're free for those two weeks the Americans show up at the cottage and it's not just you, your brother, and your cousins, but a whole gang of kids with adolescent emotions and feelings, adventurous spirits and a crushing reality that it all will come to an end just a mere fourteen days later. That's the essence of this book: that feeling when the vacation comes to an end and things have happened to change your life forever, only James doesn't know it at the time, he doesn't realize it completely until he looks back, which is the simple brilliance of this book.

Wright's narrative style reminded me so much of Hugh MacLennan's The Watch That Ends the Night, which can never be a bad thing, and he has such a skill for crafting the scenes between Gabriel and James. Their voices drifting easily between the high pitched tones of young adulthood to the more defined, fully grown mature tenor of elderly men, Gabriel and James, whether they like it or accept it or not, have deeply impacted each other's lives.

I know the fall remains the single busiest time when it comes to the more commercial forms of art (novels, films, television). But sometimes, a book comes along that reminds you why we all work so hard, for me, this fall, it might just be October. But ask me again after I've maybe read a few more of the new releases...

Into The Wild

You know, knowing the end of this film brought tears to my eyes just watching the trailer. There's something that sort of catches in your throat when you see it in a three-dimensional way that even Krakauer's book, as fascinating as it is, just didn't manage.

But it makes for an interesting debate: by turning nonfiction into fiction, in a way like this movie, does it diminish the story or heighten it?

I guess I'll have to go and see it to answer the question.

Adventures In Illness Part 81358

So yesterday I went to see the family doctor because I've got this strange rash on both sides of my nose that looks like eczema, and it simply won't go away. That coupled with the lip blisters that lead to cold sores cropping up for the second time in two weeks ensures that I'm looking awesome these days.

Anyway. I think the rash-type thing is a result of the meds, it's the only thing that it can be as I haven't changed anything with respect to my skin care regime, and even tried stopping washing my face for a day to see if that would help (it didn't). Even so, the family doctor wasn't willing to make a diagnosis and even suggested that I go see the Super Fancy Disease Doctor about it. Considering he's, like, the smartest doctor in the world and it's just a rash, I felt that maybe that wasn't quite the right thing to do.

Without having ANY idea what it might be or what might be causing it, they're sending me to a dermatologist, which is fine. Except they don't want to TREAT it in case it goes away or something before I see said dermatologist without them figuring out exactly what it is. Yay for me. It means that however long it takes for them to refer me that I'll have to continue to look like I have the chicken pox.

I tell you, Wegener's is awesome.

Not.

Interview with Janice Kulyk Keefer

The interview that I did with Janice Kulyk Keefer for our Facebook.com group is on the front page of the CBC's website today. The full interview is here.

Sunday, Sunday

The weather today is absolutely brilliant, sunny, warm but not overwhelming with a hint of fall in the air. Zesty and I had brunch and then made the decision to head over to the Farmer's Market at Liberty Village. So, before sitting down and getting back to work on my book that's due in a couple of weeks, and spending the day at the computer again, punctuated by a couple of breaks spent fighting with the vacuum and doing some laundry, I had to share this:

So, at the Farmer's Market, I decided I wanted to buy some fruit, and found the perfect stall for me: peaches, pears, plums, you name it, this farmer had it, some of which had just been picked that morning. I'm not lying when I say I got very excited by the rock hard pears he had on offer.

Now, I love rock hard fruit. I know it's not normal, but I like to eat peaches and pears when they're as hard as apples. I'm not kidding when I say I enjoy the crunch. The farmer had already packaged up the pears for me, and even threw in some sugar pears, which he said needed to be eaten when they are green, so right away. Cool. I'm planning on making fruit salad anyway.

So now that we're trying to eat things in season, I was tickled pink to see that he also had locally grown nectarines, which are, to this day, my favourite fruit. He adds those to my bags as well.

While he's putting everything in for me he says, "Some of them [the nectarines] are ready to eat but some might need to sit for a day or two out of the fridge."

"Well, I like to eat them hard," I say, "so these are actually perfect."

Dead silence ensues.

Then he looks at me like I'm absolutely nuts and hands me a semi-squishy nectarine, and says, "Eat it when they feel like this, not like an Indian rubber ball, okay?"

(But the okay is more like he's telling me to do it this way, and that not only is eating hard nectarines wrong, it's just plain stupid.)

And then he proceeds to give me some intimate advice about the freshness of the fruit. "Okay!" I say with a winning smile even though I'm thinking 'oh my god I can't wait to get home and crunch away at these half-ripe nectarines.'

I mean, I see his point, and they do smell wonderful when they are riper, but I can't get away from the crunch. I am addicted to the crunch. So I'm sure I'll be doing a disservice to the farmer when I bite into the nectarines and keep them in the fridge so they stay harder longer, but a girl likes what a girl likes, you know?

Annnnywaaay. The best part is that an entire bag of fruit, we're talking more than a dozen single pieces, came to a whopping $8.00. That's right. Less than the cost of a movie, almost less than a movie rental. And I got a lesson in fruit management too, for free.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: Said fruit in a bowl. Keep in mind I had given a bunch to Zesty too, isn't that crazy?

Good grief I love the farmer's market.

Deep Thoughts

Downloading massive amounts of classical music after listening to the CBC might actually put me completely in a computer coma today.

Things I Read Online That Make Me Think Of Jon Stewart...

...After the second presidential election when George Bush won and he mused that for the very first time he realized how truly different his thinking was from the rest of his country.

Ann Patchett protested (link via booktrade).

Seriously.

I Give You A Giant Tomato

Something's up with the soil in our backyard being made radio active by all the household construction waste or something because we're growing GIANT tomatoes.

See? SEE!

That's an old-school rotary phone people, my paternal grandmother's from when she worked at the Ontario courts many, many years ago, and they are almost THE SAME SIZE. I swear to you there is no trickery involved: I simply placed the tomato next to the phone so you could honestly see that it's HUGE.

Oh The Irony Of Being Called Thoughtful...

Thanks to Kailana who kindly gave me a thoughtful blogger award this week, ironic, yes, on a day where I did some serious thinking about good, evil and books from around the world.

Not knowing how this is supposed to work, I'm going to send out my own props to the thoughtful blogs that I read on a regular basis, they are in no particular order: Sam's, Tim's, Melanie's, Kerry's and Munro's.

#53 - Annie John

Finally, a novel from my Around the World in 52 Books challenge that truly captures the setting where the author herself was born. Jamaica Kincaid's utterly lovely Annie John, a bildungsroman to match, I think the masters like Joyce or Richler when it comes to imbibing the story with a strong sense of narrative voice and intention, takes place in Antigua, and tells the semi-autobiographical story of a young girl growing up and coming to terms with a difficult relationship with her mother.

While Kincaid's prose may be straightforward, her intentions are certainly not, as Annie John is a rich, vibrant novel where the protagonist, who grows from being an awkward but brilliant pre-adolescent to young woman setting off into the world on her own for the very first time, refuses to move seamlessly from the arms of her mother into her own generation. It's such a real book, and gave me such a rich reading experience, despite (as with The Accidental) getting through half of it months ago only to pick it up again last weekend. I could smell the salty air of the island, feel the hot sun, imagine her crisp school uniform, picture the richness of the setting, and wanted to taste all the food I had never heard of, all the while thinking that there are common themes with any girl: getting her period (oh, how very different from Margaret), finding true friends, reacting to boys, and enduring a sickness (okay maybe this one applies just to me). But Kincaid's ability to ensure that we find Annie John different, if only from the place she grew up, moves this book from a novel about a foreign place into a book that displays bits of post-colonial brilliance.

Yet, it's the private, personal, behind-closed-doors warring, back-and-forth relationship that Annie has with her mother that truly forms the backbone of this story. As Annie firmly moves beyond her safe embrace, and into that stage where all you do is fight, push back, and fight some more, the whole of her existence is described in opposition to the woman who raises her carefully and lovingly. Metaphorical maybe if you want to think in those cliched terms of countries being women and all that, but it struck me as powerful, as life-affirming, as honest and real. Of course a bildungsroman, technically (and correct me if I'm wrong) tosses out the hero into the social world, forcing his change to come about because he leaves home; but here, if we think about it in the world of these women, the social order of the family most definitely comes from Annie John's mother, and the conflict with her society truly brings about our hero's changes.

Kincaid's writing reminds me of Abeng by Michelle Cliff or the non-Wide Sargasso Sea novels by Jean Rhys in a way; she has the same kind of lilt to her sentences, but Annie John remains her story from beginning to end, influences or no influences. On the whole, I think I rather enjoyed this book, and if I were still in the essay writing mode of university, I think I would have gotten great pleasure out of deconstructing it and putting it all back together in a paper.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I shot this while reading, of course, but you can see the water and the boat, plus a bit of Tina's lovely boyfriend Mimoun lying in the sun with his own book. His was in French. He is from Paris, you know. Totally irrelevant details but they make a wonderful couple. I'm just sayin'.

#52 - The Devil and Miss Prym

As I revamped my Around the World in 52 Countries challenge to better fit with the 1001 Books list, the Paulo Coelho book that came off was The Zahir, which was replaced by his The Devil and Miss Prym simply to kill two goals with one stone. More parable than novel, The Devil and Miss Prym was intended to be the Brazil stop in my reading around the world, but as it's set in a small, mountainous French village named Viscos, it again proves the point that so many of my books are not set in the countries where the author themselves was born, and don't really tell me a whole bunch about life in his or her original setting.

Regardless, it's a short, swift read that focuses on the battle between good and evil. The devil, a fallen businessman who propositions the tiny enclosed town (population 281) into testing not only their faith but their very humanity, walks into Viscos and chooses the local barmaid Chantal (Miss Prym) to be his messenger. At once the entire town becomes aware of the man's plot: to prove that human beings are essentially bad by forcing them to murder a member of their village in exchange for gold.

A philosophical debate charges back and forth through the pros and cons of taking some one's life in exchange for the social and financial security offered by the gold. As the centre of the town's focus (blamed for bringing the terrible decision to them; gossiped about for the choices in her life; and sleepless over the problems her role in the decision creates in her life), Miss Prym moves through various emotions before coming to her own conclusions about the morality offered by this businessman haunted by the devil and his own tragedy.

It's been a while since I'd read anything where philosophy and theology were so cleanly mixed up in fiction. In fact, the last time I remember thinking about "big picture" ideas not over beer or cards, honestly, was in university, when I took quite a few philosophy classes. I'm not going to give away the ending but I would like to add that Coelho's simplistic prose and straightforward storytelling made this slim novel extremely compelling, even if I wasn't one hundred percent convinced of the story's moral and religious underpinnings.

Should it be included on the 1001 Books list? Well, I didn't enjoy it as much as I did The Alchemist, when I read it all those years ago after finishing my undergrad degree (you know that fairy tale time when you rediscover reading for reading's sake, sigh.) and I certainly think that there are far better novels out there (why is Margaret Laurence not on that list, seriously?), but I think I'm richer for having read it, if only to have done some thinking about the great never-ending battle between good and evil in my own infallibly human mind.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The cover of this book is grand, isn't it? Anyway, it's a close up snapped on the sun deck before leaving the cottage to come back to the city in a panic of "is it really over my extra-long weekend?"

Morning Bells, Awkward Spills And Writing What Not

The bells on the church just behind our house just rang out. It's an odd sound to hear in this day and age, and it always makes me think that I'm living somewhere else where church bells still ring for specific reasons. As they went off at 9:39 AM, it's hard to say, but I'm assuming they're just testing out the bells for some sort of celebration or for tomorrow's services.

Anyway, I half-fell off my bike on Thursday morning on the way to work, and it was more of a shock to my system than anything. And, as much as I complain about the idiotic people in cars downtown when you're a biker, this time, this almost-accident was entirely my fault. I was going the wrong way up a one way street when a car came roaring around the corner, not expecting me, who was biking a bit too far away from the curb as well. I live in a quiet (for the most part) neighbourhood and it's rare that any car turns on to that street for the two minutes I'm actually on it before getting to College Street. Regardless, I had to slam on my brakes, and it's a slight downhill so I was going really very fast, and almost toppled over my bike. I slammed my arm on the handle bars and skidded my feet to stop myself from crashing into the back of his car. But what hurt the most was I jammed my poor tragic hip so hard that it brought tears instantly to my eyes. Oh, it hurt.

I limped while peddling the rest of the way to work and then was sore all day and most of the night, and then didn't bike yesterday, which was okay because I had things to do after work. But after so many months of not being in pain, it's still a shocker when my tragic hip wakes up and says, "Whoa, don't do that to me, come on now!"

However, I've certainly noticed how much stronger I am this summer compared to last. I am doing restorative yoga once a week, swimming like a fish all weekend at the cottage, jumping on the trampoline at least once per weekend, and then biking during the week. I still haven't lost a pound, nuts or no nuts, but I can feel myself have more energy, especially with the swimming. Where I could do one lap in the lake (halfway to the little island and back) kicking with the noodle three weekends ago, I'm now doing two or three, and even floatation device free for one of them. I can make it up bigger hills in the city now, and have more confidence in my step now that my legs aren't so wobbly. Small victories, right?

We're not up at the cottage this weekend, much to my chagrin, but it's also probably for the best. I'm a bit behind in my latest abridgment, and do need to get cracking before my September 1st deadline. I've taken the last week of August off to spend up north with that manuscript and my own story, and I'm thinking about which classes to take this fall at U of T, before I can apply for the Humber School for Writers again in the winter.

It's a long life, this writing life. There are days when it seems forever just to write one sentence or get caught up here, on the blog. I finished my first new freelance assignment, which I'll expand upon once I know it's been accepted, approved and another one's coming. While it wasn't hard per se, it was certainly different, and I'm worried that my tone wasn't quite right and that I haven't done a good job—which are always the concerns when you put virtual pen to paper for someone other than yourself.

Oh, wait, it's even worse when it's for yourself: you're utterly convinced that it's sh*t.

#51 - The Accidental

As much as I enjoyed Absolution, am I ever glad that I put Ali Smith on my Around the World in 52 Books challenge. The Accidental is one of the best books I've read this summer, with its echoes of Mark Haddon and David Mitchell (I still think his Black Swan Green has never gotten the attention it deserves; it's a brilliant book), Smith's novel quickly sucks you in with her switching voices, intuitive point of view and tumbling prose. And while she's officially my Scottish writer, and this book is set in England, it's hard to assess whether or not it's an accurate reflection of the chosen country's literature. I'll probably have to delve into Smith's backlist to find out if she's written a book set in Scotland, but after reading The Accidental I'd be surprised if it wasn't on the 1001 Book people's radar and might be included in an updated version years in the future.

Annnnnywaaay.

The story of the Smart family (daughter, son, stepfather, mother) is told chapter by chapter in each character's voice starting with Astrid (aforementioned daughter), as they spend the summer away from London in a "substandard" vacation house. When a stranger named Amber who has absolutely no connection to anyone in the family, regardless of what everyone in the house thinks, simply walks into their life and starts making changes, she becomes the catalyst that skyrockets the family into a whole other world in terms of their physical and emotional lives.

Each character has a specific, overriding emotional issue: Astrid's being bullied at school; Magnus suffers through a tragedy somewhat of his own making; Michael, the step-father, needs to deal with his, ahem, indiscretions; and Eve, the mother, suffers from a writer's block that bleeds into all aspects of her person. But when Amber bashes into their lives and mashes up their thoughts not only about each other but about the various issues that are pulling them apart and in all different directions. Amber is a hippie, a charlatan, a psychic, a seductress, and her presence finally makes everyone come to terms with the facades that structure even the purest of lives.

On the whole, it took me a long time to get through this book. I picked it up months ago and read 30-odd pages and then put it down. Picked it up again a few weeks later, started from the place I stopped, got confused and gave up. But this weekend at the cottage, after a particularly intense game of multi-language Scrabble, I relaxed before swimming and read the entire book from cover to cover. And I loved it. I really did.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I'm proudly displaying the book on my grandmother's sideboard-thingy that has pictures of her tucked into that totally creepy print of my uncle's. Oh, and I think I have the US version of the book because I ordered it through my old work...

On The Road Turns 50

How could I possibly have missed this? Shelf Awareness pointed me to a NY Times article that celebrates two very different yet bestselling books of 1957: Peyton Place, which I haven't read, and On the Road, which I have read at least half a dozen times. Iconic, culturally for so many reasons, it's important to me, not just as my go-to 'favourite' book, but for what it represents: reading at different stages.

I have my battered stolen school library copy of On the Road that I've carried to university and back, through young adulthood and into my, ahem, golden years. I've got the copy I bought in university when I had to do a shared project with a fellow in my class that I ended up having a giant crush on. I've got the copy I read when I finished school, and together the RRHB and I had 4 or 5 copies of the book when we merged households almost 9 years ago.

It's a book that I don't care to study. A book that I don't care to analyze. It's a book that causes me comfort just knowing that it's on the shelf. It's not something I can explain, this love for Jack Kerouac, but I've avoided reading so many of his books just because I know there are a limited amount, and I always want something new. I realized my mistake when I discovered Henry Miller when I turned 19. I read everything he ever wrote and then some and soon realized that it's like eating all your Hallowe'en candy, too much of a good thing and all that.

When we took our trip to California a few years ago, I read Big Sur, the copy of which we had picked up visiting City Lights in San Francisco. I read Dharma Bums when I felt like I needed it in between university and grad school, when I was still considering getting an advanced degree. And that's kind of what Kerouac is for me, a representation of art at its most meaningful, when it jumps over the line from entertainment to ethos, when it bleeds into ever little bit of your being and when it forces me to change the way I think about all things. Now, I roll down the window while the car speeds along, stereo on, wind knotting my hair, and never stop imagining that perfect trip that never ends.

Ripped From The Headlines

We're back from the cottage and I have three books to write reviews for, which I will do the moment I get home from work. However, one of the things I can't stop myself from doing is reading a news headline and thinking, "Hum, I wonder how long until they use that in an episode of Law and Order."

The latest, this crazy case of Canadian sailors being kicked out of the navy for cocaine trafficking. How awesome would that be to see the in the original Law and Order? It's always so dramatic when the NYC cops go up against the military cops.

Sigh.

Oh, and my new favourite show? The Closer. I have to watch it on W Network, which means we're seeing episodes all out of order and not remotely current, but who cares, Kyra Sedgwick rocks. Thank you!

#50 - Absolution

Sometimes the heat makes life absolutely unbearable and I find it hard to concentrate, which means it's necessary to pick up a mystery. At first, Caro Ramsay's Absolution presented such a gritty and realistic portrait of Glasgow that I considered making it, instead of The Accidental, my Scotland stop in the Around the World in 52 Books challenge. I have since come to my senses just knowing how much Maylin loved that book makes me want to sit down and finish it this weekend (which I just might do having an extra day to spend up at the cottage on Monday). I've been half-way through Ali Smith's book for about four months now and there's no good reason why I am procrastinating finishing it.

Annnnnywaaaay, I did finish Absolution up this morning before work, having but a few pages to go after putting it down last night when my eyes refused to stay open for a moment longer. The story starts off really strong and introduces the book's main detective, DCI Alan McApline, in a clever way. Smart, rugged, and handsome, he's forced to reckon with his past when a case that's been haunting him for twenty years becomes the focus point of a current investigation. A young woman named Anna, pregnant but hideously scarred from an acid burn, lies in the hospital, and McAlpine, then a young policeman, is assigned to the case. Her killer is never found but her scarred face, known to McAlpine only through pictures, consumes him. As all good investigators do, he gets on with it, has a successful marriage to Helena (who becomes the subject of an unfortunate number of dropped plot threads) and tries to forget all about Anna, which we all know is impossible.

Fast-forward twenty years when McAlpine is transferred back to the unit he left after the double trauma of Anna's death and his brother's untimely drowning in the line of duty. The Crucifixion Killer, known to the cops on McAlpine's crew as 'Christopher Robin' (a quirky profiler's idea of a good code name), starts murdering women, and McAlpine's charged with finding him. The two cases intertwine until they come to a shocking conclusion, which makes this a little anti-Alexander McCall Smith, if I had to compare this book to my favourite mystery series, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.

While I found the plot somewhat muddled in places, and got a little frustrated with the fact that there are simply too many characters, I did like Ramsay's book overall. It's fast-paced, and way more Cracker than the bland American mysteries I usually watch on television (ahem, Law and Order), which I totally appreciated. While I didn't actually guess whodunnit by the end, I had figured out some of the clever twists Ramsay drops in throughout the narrative. All in all it's a perfectly satisfactory summer mystery for a foggy-headed girl on an August afternoon.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I read half the book here and half the book up north, I took the picture on my desk where you can see the remnants of my tax forms and the corner of my next abridged classic source material peaking in at the corner.

And if you're feeling particularly brave, check out the book's trailer. Ohhh, it gives me creeps just hearing the music in my head.

Booker Longlist Announced

In case anyone's looking for key reads for the fall, PW just posted the Man Booker longlist. The only one I've read is McEwan's On Chesil Beach, which I enjoyed immensely. And even though I haven't read it, I'm pleased to see Michael Redhill's Consolation on there, which is a book that someone, somewhere made the argument that it's the ultimate novel about Toronto, even if I can't remember who said it or where I read it.

Hot Water - Hooray!

They came this morning and fixed the hot water tank, which was apparently never installed properly in the first place, so they need to come back tomorrow and fix the vents. This will cost us $400.00. Isn't home ownership lovely?

However, nothing can dampen my mood today as I'm working from home for the first time in months with wide open windows, gorgeous sunshine outside, and the brilliant smell from the chocolate factory wafting in with each breath.

And in other good news, I got a new freelance gig that I'm pretty excited about but I don't want to jinx it by talking about it too much before I actually hand in my copy. Needless to say, my mother would have been tickled pink, but more on that later.

Oh, and I'm pages away from actually finishing a book. A real book!

Quick Updates On The Fly

Our hot water tank broke this morning so my dream of having a lovely hot shower after four days up north at the cottage spilled out all over the cold, basement floor. This did not start off my day well.

As a result, no bike ride in because I was so late that my RRHB had to drive me to work. I hate driving to work.

I did not manage to finish a single book this weekend although I did watch Zodiac and half of Perfume. Well, that's not exactly true, I read Dramacon, my very first manga, which was super-cute although I felt old just flipping the pages. Oh, and I also felt old because I had to learn how to read the books. Yes, even reading manga is a new experience for me. But the Tokyopop website is just so cool, isn't it?

Now I've got conditioner in my hair, I'm exhausted because I just couldn't sleep, and I wish I was still up at the cottage because the weather was just so luscious this weekend I didn't want to leave.

How are all of you? I feel like the summer is whizzing by so fast that I haven't had a moment to catch my breath.

The Girl Who Has Nothing To Say

I've been at a work conference since Sunday, and haven't been home a single night this week to really blog, so here's a quick catch-up:

1. My delicious RRHB downloaded (shhh) the current episodes of Rescue Me that have aired in the States on FX but won't show in Canada until September. I do not feel remotely guilty about this for many reasons, the first of which being the evil company that ruined my life actually airs the show so bully on them. But most importantly, it's an amazing show, one of my favourites, that gets me thinking about all kinds of issues and shocks me at every turn, and I simply could not wait. It's beyond frustrating to try and avoid the spoilers, which is almost impossible if you move in the same virtual circles that I do, and try to be patient for months before the show airs here when he can click two or three buttons and we have the entire season almost at our disposal.

2. Men who walk around in my neighbourhood without shirts to show off their impressive physiques are somewhat like overly made-up ladies who wear white thongs under their white pants: they're simply giving me too much information.

3. People who ride mopeds in the bike lane are annoying. Truly.

4. I'm in the middle of reading a book about email. It was given to us at work to help improve our email correspondence. Apparently, we get too much of it and it annoys some people. Okay, I'll admit it, yes, I mocked the book when I saw it sitting on my little assigned seat. But I'm prepared to eat crow. Because it's actually a really solid little book full of amazing tips and fascinating bits of advice. Oh, and now that they say that "Dear Comrade" has gone completely out of style, I'm on a mission to bring it back. Perhaps I'll start each post with Dear Comrades...today I?

5. Dear Comrades: I certainly wish that I hadn't shown up at the office on Sunday a full four hours before I was supposed to, regardless of how much work I managed to get done before our conference actually began.

6. I've been catching all kinds of sh*t for defending the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice. Apparently, being the last person on earth never to have seen the truly superior (or so I'm told) BBC version has opened me up for a world of ridicule my esteemed pop-culture brain just isn't used to. What say all of you? How wrong am I to enjoy the latest version? Or do I hardly expect any of you to own to it?

D'Oh

On Thursday night we went to see a preview screening of The Simpsons Movie. As I'm not the biggest Simpsons fan in my household, that honour goes to the RRHB, who was quite excited that we got passes to a preview screening. It was at the CN Tower, which was a very strange place to see a film, but whatever, a free movie is a free movie.

And I don't want to give too much away, especially about the funny gags and super-sharp writing, but will say this, if you're any kind of fan, had seen the show at least once, and, well, don't live under a rock, you'll laugh. I mean, it's basically an extended episode with some hijinks that aren't suitable for prime time thrown in, and it was totally entertaining in all the right ways.

But if I had to be totally, totally honest, I'm pleased we got to see it for free because I'm not 100% sure that I'd pay full-price at the multiplex for it. Not that it matters as we paid just as much to park as we would have for the tickets anyway, so perhaps that's a moot point.

Birth Day

Bittersweet are these days where you technically turn a year older but feel no different. Today is made even more bittersweet by the fact that I'm at work, which I have managed to avoid for five years of birthdays in a row.

Last year we were in NYC, which was amazing, and hot. The year before that I was in Paris and then Ireland, which was life changing, and hot. The year before that I was preparing for hip surgery and on the cusp of a nervous breakdown (silly boss from hell, sillier ragdoll for getting that caught up in the nonsense) but was on holidays and we went to see Spider-Man 2, and it was a wonderful day. Then I spent two weeks up at the cottage, which was amazing (even if I ruined my book club just prior to it. Don't ask!). The year before that we were in PEI, and the year before that we were in California, which was also life changing and not the least bit hot, much to my surprise.

And so tonight we're going to see a special screening of the new Simpsons movie, and to celebrate, I've created my avatar. The red shoes are an homage to Sam Lamb. While it's a work day, and I'm not in Paris, or Ireland, or California, or at the cottage or on the east coast, it's still something out of the ordinary, and by the time you get to be my age, isn't that all that matters?

#49 - A Golden Age

I thoroughly enjoyed Tahmima Anam's A Golden Age. Set in Bangladesh just as the war for their independence broke out in 1971, the novel centres around Rehana, a woman in her mid-thirties with two grown children (a son and daughter), and her struggle to keep her life together during the difficult times.

A Golden Age takes place in the town of Dhaka, which is technically East Pakistan to begin with before it Bangladesh. Tahmima Anam has a talent for bringing rich detail to the page that not only truly reflects the time and place, but also builds up an atmosphere around Rehana herself. She loves to garden, and therefore the landscape reflects that fact. She's a widow, and despite having some hard times, manages to keep her family together throughout the struggle by building a house on her property that she rents out. But most of all, Rehana's a mother, and the entire story with the novel bears witness to this fact.

One of the most interesting aspects of war fiction, if that's even a genre, for me when it's told from a female perspective, is how different the story remains. War on the home front may be worlds apart from where the front-line action might be (although the war touches Rehana and her friends directly), it still changes lives in ways that make it impossible to ignore. There is a subtle strength in Rehana's character that reminds me of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Ramsay in a way, and the argument was made to me, many years ago during an undergraduate class in modernism, that To the Lighthouse should be considered a war novel. While I'm not sure if it's an accepted reading of Woolf's novel or not, the idea stuck with me, and that's how I approached my thinking about A Golden Age, as if it too was a war novel in the purest of senses.

Like To the Lighthouse, there's a building that Rehana rents out on her property called Shona that becomes a central character in the novel. As life in war is reflected by its inhabitants, and the house itself takes on a new personality. It's a fascinating idea, I think, to imagine not only how characters feel the impact of war, from the blankets the women sew on top of Rehana's roof for the refugees, to the pain and anguish she feels when her children become involved in various ways, but to also see what changes in the physical landscape beyond just craters made by bombs (Khaled Hosseini, I'm looking at you). Even a detail as simple as a bed that used to be used for a child has now been appropriated for other things makes you imagine war permeating every aspect of a life, and not just those lives on the front lines with the bullets.

Regardless, I wanted to read this novel because I didn't have Bangladesh on my Around the World in 52 Countries list, and I'm so glad I got a chance to experience it. For a first novel, it's really quite wonderful. It's also exciting because HarperCollins Canada will publish the novel in Canada this January, and even though you could order it from Amazon, it's actually worth the wait.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I left the book on the dock when we drove home and had to call my aunt to rescue it. The cover got a bit water marked (as it rained a bit, just a few drops) but I wanted to show the poor abandoned novel where it would have ended up had my family not shown it a little bit of kindness. And what a cold, cloudy day it was! Shockingly, it was first-thing in the morning when I took the picture. And the bits of wood everywhere are from Gordie, the dog, who loves sticks so much that it's almost impossible to understand.

Life As I Know It Is Over

So I went to see the renal dietitian today, and she was perfectly pleasant, as many people I deal with are at the hospital. However, she has told me to stop eating nuts.

ENTIRELY.

On top of that, other things on the 'must-go' list include: juice (no more than a 1/2 cup a day), tuna sandwiches more than once every couple weeks, cheese (ack!), butter (which I only use to cook with) and muffins.

As I'm 'high risk' with this whole cholesterol thing because of the Wegener's, I really need to crack down and deal with the situation but I do love almonds, cashews, macadamia nuts, pecans, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, all yummy, all out.

Like I said, life as I know it is over.

Sigh.

Cottage Redux

We're up north this weekend where, you know the refrain, I'll be reading and writing. Have a brilliant weekend all!

Ragdoll: The Icon

A friend over at McNally Robinson sent me the most delicious icon that I will now use on a regular basis. He had created a poster in-store to brand the 'staff picks' so you could always tell who was recommending which book. And the image to the left is the one that I choose.

How awesome is that? It's me in t-shirt format.

And if you have a chance, play around with their new site, which launched today. It's an amazing example of a store pushing the boundaries in terms of delivering content that's relevant but also intent upon building a community around the books that they sell.

Oprah Schmoprah

I have to admit that I was quite sad when my online book club decided to evolve. I had really enjoyed the discussions I had with the group about the few books I was able to read (I joined late), and found them to be smart, wordy in all the right ways, and a fabulous bunch of readers. Having been stung by the whole book club concept in a previous life, I was quite happy to find a group of people who actually talked about the books, and we even had some author participation for a number of titles, which is always a thrill.

Annnnnywaaay. The group has evolved now into something pretty special: Oprah Schmoprah, the blog. And I just wrote my first post. Hopefully, many more are to come.

Ragdoll: Web Designer, Cough, Cough

I've been blurring the lines between work life and real life lately so I apologize in advance for this link. But, I've been manipulating MySpace templates for work and I think the one that we launched today for the promotion around Jon Evans's Invisible Armies isn't half bad.

Rhymenoceros & Hippy-crites

So, last night we (the RRHB and I) went over to have dinner with Scarbie and her lovely hubbie, as she calls him, the Dog. Dinner was delish, of course, but we were talking about The Flight of the Conchords, which has been cracking me up and is now one of my favourite summer shows (the others, in no particular order, are So You Think You Can Dance, Big Love, and Entourage).

The episode we watched the other night included Bret and Jerome chillin' and illin' with their hip-hop monikers, "Rhymenocerous" and "Hiphopopotamus." I can't even say how much this cracked me up, but as a girl whose favourite joke is "What's brown and sticky. A stick," it obviously doesn't take much.

And then later on in the evening, the Dog referred to himself as a 'hippy-crite' -- one who knows what they're doing to the environment and feels bad about it almost instantly, but still goes ahead and does it anyway. And again, we cracked up. So if that's not a contender for the Urban Dictionary, I don't know what is. They we got into a heated discussion about carbon credits, because I'll often make the argument that yes, I did get my hair dyed, but then I donated x number of dollars to David Suzuki to make up for it. It's all about balance. In my mind anyway. But that's besides the point: I'm guessing I'm a self-defined hippy-crite too, doing my very best but still driving my car to the cottage and buying things on the internet.

What's the point of this post? Oh, the humour, of course! I totally think that the Rhymenocerous should rap about being a hippy-crite. How awesome would that be? And if you haven't seen it already, check it here:

The Bat And #48 - Bec

So I'm all about finding themes in my life. I don't know why, but my mind just sort of wanders all over these places and looks for connections. Now, I mentioned that I've been reading Darren Shan, a children's horror author who has written a deliciously scary series of books under the moniker of the "The Demonata." (It gives me shivers just to type that). I read another one night while waiting for my aunt to get back to the cottage (and hanging out with the dogs) that was totally addictive. Like a sugar rush, it makes you totally high and buggy, and then you come crashing down once you've turned the last page.

The story of a young priestess in the time where Celts and Picts and all kinds of other tribes ruled the land, Bec, the self-titled character of the novel, sets off on a challenge to a) battle the demons who have taken over, well, everything and b) find herself by finding her true tribe (family). She comes into contact with a much earlier version of Lord Loss, the same demon who tormented Grubbs in the first book in the series. Scar-ee.

Two days earlier we were tormented by a slightly smaller but no less scarier version of our own Lord Loss. Granted, more Silverwing than Shan, I swear to the gods that I had never been so scared in my entire life.

Let's set the scene: I'm sort of a little drunk after having maybe a half-pint too many Strongbow. I happily wind the way down the dark road back up to my grandmother's cottage. I'm thinking about writing and family and fun stuff and playing cards and all kinds of other delightful things. I'm relaxed. I'm happy.

Snuggled all up in bed after reading for a bit, I've got my earplugs in and I've drifted off dreaming of who knows what but it probably includes Ethan Hawke.

I hear, "Deanna! Deanna!" as my cousin Cam comes back to the cottage with his lovely lady Krista. "I don't mean to scare you but there's a bat in the cottage."

Keep in mind we're all tired at this point and kind of delirious.

I scramble out of bed and head into the main room, which was a good thing because the bat was IN MY BEDROOM.

Neither Krista nor myself are feeling particularly brave at this point, so Cam whips up this awesome contraption using a couple of coat hangers, a garbage bag, a broom stick and some tuck tape. Now that sh*t is strong.

And he proceeds to chase the bat from one room to the next as it swoops and swerves its way into every single crevice it can trying to elude Cam's capture. Until it lands ON THE WINDOW IN MY BEDROOM where we finally trap it between the screen and the glass.

Okay, when a bat swoops at your head it's scary. Because it gets so close that you can actually HEAR IT FLAP.

After we captured it, we all felt horrible, a) for screaming like maniacs and b) for scaring the wits off the little guy. We ended up cutting the screen so he could escape in the night, which he did, thankfully. But that creates yet another job for my RRHB to do up north because he'll be the one to replace the screen, which is not fun, I know, but there was a BAT in the cottage.

And for your lovely edification, here's a picture. See...SCAR-EEEEEE.

#48 - The Double Bind

Wow, this book threw me for a loop. There are so many reasons why I appreciate Chris Bojhalian's writing, in a way, he's like an old-school moralist, not that he preaches, but that each of his novels have a way of showing you, like a good philosophy teacher, the limitations of your own thought. The Double Bind is no different, and with every novel, Bojhalian's skill as a novelist seems to improve, and this book is on par with my very favourite of his, The Buffalo Soldier.

The novel's protagonist, Laurel Estabrook, is attacked while riding her bike down an abandoned logging road in Vermont. As she copes with the tragedy, we're pulled further and further into her world. We see her become obsessed with the photographs of Bobbie Crocker, a homeless man she helped at the shelter where she works, as she uncovers a world of secrets around the story of Jay Gastby.

I don't want to say much more than that because to give anything away with this novel would be to ruin it, for like the Lippman, the ending really makes the entire reading experience. Let me just suffice it to say that not everything is as it seems, and that's the true quality in the writing of this novel, Bojhalian's skill in exploring or, rather, plunging the depths of the young woman's despair over her attack.

See how it was hard to get any work done this week? The reading was just so good.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: It's quite fitting, again, that I read a lot of this book on the old-school psychiatrist's chair we have in the cottage. The book is sitting upon it on an old plaid blanket that I adore—even though it's the itchy kind. And can I say that the cover of my ARC is way, way better than the cover of the finished book? It's so blah, that other cover, compared to the vibrant images on the advance reader.

#47 - What The Dead Know

Before picking this book as one of our Facebook The Reading Group titles this month, I had seen Kate's capsule review of Laura Lippman's What the Dead Know and immediately put it on my TBR pile.

Let me say it this way: I could not put this book down.

Here are all the things that I did not do because I was engrossed in the story of two sisters who disappear one sunny pre-Easter afternoon from a mall in Baltimore (yes, where The Wire is set, fab):

1. Entertain my nephew. I rocked him so he'd go to sleep and then let him sleep on me for almost a half hour after he sort of semi-woke up so that I could keep reading. I didn't put the book down until he made it absolutely clear he was having no more of it.

2. Swim in the lake. It was one of the few beautiful days and I put off going swimming although it was a million degrees out because I was obsessed with finding out if the woman who has an accident and leaves the scene of the crime actually was one of the missing Bethany sisters.

3. Eat. Seriously, I skipped lunch and was absolutely starving until I had finished.

4. Talk. Really, I cloistered myself in my grandmother's cottage while my cousins and all the rest of my wonderful family were doing all kinds of fun outdoorsy-type stuff.

5. Finish the seventeen other books I had started. All of my other reading, including two or three books that were half-done took a back seat until I had read the very last word.

And I'm telling you, it's a hell of a good last few words. Do you need any more then that? I don't think so.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The very chair where I sat for four hours on Tuesday reading this deliciously addictive little novel.

#46 - Love In The Time Of Cholera

I find it perfectly fitting to be writing about Gabriel García Márquez's masterpiece, Love in the Time of Cholera, while I have a fever. As there's nothing new that I can possibly add to the world's discussion of this text other then to say that I came to it for many reasons: the first of which would have to be its inclusion on the 1001 Books list; the second, because I'd read One Hundred Years of Solitude after finishing my undergrad at Queen's and fell hard for it; and I read Ben McNally's Valentine's Day column over at Booklounge.ca where he said it was the ultimate book to read for that holiday. See, lots of good reasons to pick up this book.

Regardless, could there be a more expressive book about love ever written? Probably, but this book took my breath away more times then I could possibly count. Full of every single type of love story, from an unrequited affair that lasts the length of the book itself to the hills and valleys of a long, successful marriage, from the physical to the spiritual, from the epistolary to the serenade, it's impossible not to appreciate love in all its forms after finishing this novel. The sentences are exquisite, complex and meandering, almost to the point of getting lost down the cobblestones of the author's mind, until he brings you back to the apex, which lands in exactly the right place.

The Columbian port in of call for my Around the World in 52 Books, I can't think of another novel I could savour like this, as if it's a sweet cheese or a fine glass of wine. I was all rosy for love after finishing this book up north, and ended up watching Before Sunset for the fourth or fifth time. My own story ended up with a lot of long sentences as I thought about the main love affair that forms the center section. Of course, I ended up editing half of them down over the last few days I was there because they didn't make much sense, as I was all drunk on Columbia, the Caribbean, the food, the smell of almonds, and the like. Ahem.

In the end, the craziest analogy I can come up with that describes the reading experience of Love in the Time of Cholera is this: a few years back when I was still working at the evil empire, I was having a discussion with my coworker Lynne, where we were imagining what life would be like if we were cats. Go with me here. It's okay as it's not as kooky as it sounds. Beyond the pale ass licking jokes we got from the cheap seats, we were thinking of how cats don't really know time as we do, how their days are measured by their senses, by things that they smell, by places they visit. In a way, Márquez's novel is set out by the senses as well, but it's also defined by one emotion, in a way, it's all measured out by love. Love sets the pace and brings the action. Love defines the characters and their motivation. Just like a cat smelling its way through the day, this novel imagines an entire book not set about by the plain, banal chronology of the weeks, days, months, years in a life, but by love itself, as real as the grass, the trees, and yes, the ass, that my cat uses to define her day. In a way, it's the essence of everything. And aren't we just dumb enough never to realize it.

And there. I've jumped the shark now by mentioning my cat in my blog. Sigh.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: Of course I finished this novel while in bed. If you look closely enough you can see the tip of my grandfather's paint-by-numbers on the wall.

#45 - Nowhere Man

Aleksandar Hemon's Nowhere Man took me many weeks to finish, but like so many of the extra-ordinarily literary books on my Around the World in 52 Countries challenge that sit on the 1001 Books list, I've come to expect that I will work my way through these books like one would an art gallery in a foreign city: slowly, methodically, and with great patience.

The story of Josef Pronek as told from the point of view of many different narrators, Nowhere Man is a captivating novel that highlights the uncanny ability of the author to challenge conventional storytelling techniques while creating a character who ultimately glues the book together. Hemon, originally from Sarajevo, perhaps perfectly distills the idea of a splintered society, what war does to a person, to a people, in this novel. At times he merges the stereotypical (The Beatles as revolutionary charge and right of passage) with the nonsensical (Pronek's time as a canvasser for Greenpeace), but always manages to show how each narrator maintains that little bit of love and affection for Josef without losing the reader.

All in all, it's a powerful, moving book that I would recommend if only for it's wonderful use of form. In a way, it's a bit like learning a new language each time we switch narrators and see yet another sliver of Pronek's life. The syntax might be different in each section, but the end goals, communication, compassion, understanding, englightenment, remain exactly the same.

It's interesting too, how my reading life and my movie life have been tracing common themes of one another really without any conscious effort on my part. Recently, the RRHB and I watched The Secret Life of Words. Sarah Polley plays a young nurse also stunted by the war in Bosnia. The two characters intersect so nicely: Josef finally releases so much of the tension built up through the entire novel by falling in love with an American girl and, in a way, the very same thing happens to Hanna, Polley's character (she falls in love with an injured oil rig worker). It was a good experience reading and watching the two works somewhat in tandem, to get a male and female perspective, in art form, of the conflict.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I finished the book one very foggy, very cool morning on the sun deck while my cousins slept in the cottage and I wasn't quite ready to start writing.

Back On The Concrete

As it stands, I have returned from the cottage fully rested only to now have developed a cold. Bah. The weather was crap as viewed from the picture of the rain on the window from the sliding glass door in the cottage, but it didn't matter because my family was there, and I had a grand old time, as always.

I'm in the process of organizing my pictures and putting to mind blog posts for the five books I read, plus I wanted to chat a bit about all the work I got done on my super-duper long story now (it's up to almost 56k words), and treat you all to an entertaining story about a bat.

Yes, you heard me: a real, live bat.

(Shiver).

Holiday!

Tomorrow we're off to the cottage for an entire week. One week of relaxing, of writing, of listening to music, of watching the lake, of swimming in the lake, of reading books, of playing cards, of drinking a beer or two, of seeing my family, of celebrating my family, all of the things that deserve high kicks and sh*t eating grins.

And corn. Lots of corn. What's the cottage without corn on the cob and cards? Seriously?

Not to worry. When I get back there will be plenty of updates. I'll have finally finished two of my challenge books Nowhere Man and Love in the Time of Cholera, plus hopefully quite a few more.

Have a great week all!

Super-Fly Fancy Disease Doctor

Hallelujah! I'm safe for another five months, and can start reducing my medication, slightly, which is all so very exciting. On all accounts, I've got my "mild" Wegener's under control (his words). We'll see for sure what he says when all the bloodwork comes back in the next week or so. But by all accounts, I'm chuffed—it's been a long, long three years.

#44 - Lord Loss

Sometimes, I don't know whether or not to count YA and/or kids books in the final reading tally. They're definitely quick reads, and sort of inflate the numbers, but sometimes I actually enjoy reading the books so much that I want to talk about them, and not just in passing.

Anyway, last week I read Darren Shan's Lord Loss for our What Would Harry Read blog. Man, it's one terrifying book. Normally, I don't go for the really scary stuff, and goodness knows it takes a lot for the RRHB to get me to watch a horror film (after he dragged me to see The Exorcist, I've never forgiven him). But the book is so addictive that I found myself enjoying it as much for the style it's written in, really slick and cool stream of consciousness, as for the main character himself, a tenacious young fellow with the unfortunate name of Grubbs Grady.

Grubbs battles with a hell of a demon, pun intended, called Lord Loss after he discovers his family is kind of cursed. I don't want to give too much away because there are a lot of really good twists and turns that Shan takes throughout the narrative and it's actually better not to know they're coming. I wasn't prepared for the horror-style violence in the book, but it didn't dissuade me from reading the book in one quick sitting, late at night, in bed.

No photo in context, but I am going to post the truly terrifying cover, because, well, it's kind of cool in that old-school horror way.

You're Welcome

I've been noticing for a long while now that people have stopped saying, "You're welcome." For the most part it's become "no problem," the California-surfer-dude's reply meant, I would imagine, to reassure the person thanking you that it really was easy to do whatever was just asked or accomplished. But to me, it seems a hollow, unmannerly action to say, "no problem," when someone takes the time to thank you. It sort of renders the thank you even more obsolete if it truly took no effort on the part of the replier. What's even the point of thanking a person if all they're going to respond with is a curt, cheery "no problemo" in reply?

We were at a dinner party the other Friday night when I was mentioning that this been been bothering me for a while. I make every effort to say, "you're welcome," and have to catch myself mid-"no probl--" more often than not. Once I brought it up, Jill, our delightful hostess, said that she had read an article in the NY Times Magazine about the slow disappearance of "you're welcome." While William Safire's commentary is mainly about "pleasure" and the glaring appropriation of the word by US politicians, he does note that in the States, "thank you" is now the most common phrase to use once someone offers their own thanks: "no thank you... noooo, thank you...no, please, thank you."

It could go on like this forever in a meaningless Saturday Night Live sketch kind of way. Safire suggests we should make every effort to say, "my pleasure," when someone thanks us, which I'll try to do as well. But in my own mannerly way, that lovely phrase will never be quite right either. I was brought up on "please," "thank you," and "you're welcome," and maybe for the first time in my life, my language is truly starting to show my age.

Wilco

Massey Hall in Toronto was the last stop on Wilco's Eastern Seaboard tour (dunno if that was the 'name' of the tour considering how totally un-rock sexy it is). And it's been so long since I'd been to any kind of ticketed rock show (Prince, I think, was the last stadium show that I'd seen), that you kind of forget the whole experience. How far you are away from the band: I always prefer to be right up front so I can see what's going on. How big the show seems: lots of flashing lights and the smoke machine. How everyone sings along to the big songs and whoops when they hear the first chords of the ones they really like.

It was a great show, and I knew a lot of the songs just by osmosis because the records are in constant rotation around our house, but I was super-pleased when they played "A Shot in the Arm," and the lovely "Via Chicago" from Summerteeth, which is the one I listen to most of the time. And I liked how funny Jeff Tweedy was—when the audience started clapping spontaneously, he said, "You're in the wrong tempo!" And he encouraged the audience to clap during the second encore, when they were playing "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" from A Ghost is Born, while the band stayed silent, he said, "Keep it together Toronto!" (or something of the like). Because many of the audiences all sped up. Funny those things that musicians notice; things that my RRHB notices, that I would have no idea whether or not we were faster or slower than the beat. "Did we speed up?" I asked my RRHB afterwards, "a little," he said.

Funny, though, too, because I did a lot of thinking yesterday about the greatest rock shows I've ever seen, and most have them have been in small clubs: Tricky Woo at the El Mocambo, The Cons and Weakerthans from backstage at Lee's, the Hip from backstage at Copp's. Shows like that where I've been spoiled by a small crowd or by the RRW status, so it was a real treat to see a band from way up high, sort of observing the show as much as taking part in it. It's different, for sure, to feel so unconnected to what's going on well beneath you, but still hearing and seeing it all from a distance. But it was so much fun and the band was so good: big and intimate, cavalier and intense, brilliant and subdued, tight and fluid, all kinds of adjectives that prove I have no talent for writing about rock and roll.

I'd see them again in a heartbeat.

NOTE: the rest of the 'during the show' cell phones pictures are still on the RRHB's phone to be edited in later when he gets back from the cottage.