#15 - The Wig My Father Wore

I had wanted to finish either The Wig My Father Wore or The Third Policeman by St. Patrick's Day as my monthly "themed" reading. Oddly, both books are truly absurd, which is why I only finished one of them. I'm not sure if absurdist fiction is necessarily for me -- in a way, I don't like to be confused or feel like a story is convoluted just for the sake of making a point. Sure, I read Beckett in university and enjoyed it at the time but these days I just don't have the concentration it requires to read something that deems the absurd a necessary plot point. Hence my abandonment of The Third Policeman.

And while Anne Enright's The Wig My Father Wore dips its toes into the same kind of storytelling, there's at least somewhat of a plot to keep you motivated. Grace, the novel's protagonist, opens her door one evening after work (she's a producer for a Dating Game-style show in Ireland) to discover an angel on her stoop. Stephen lives with her for a time. They have cryptic conversations and an even stranger love affair all the while he's changing her body -- literally.

There are parts to Enright's writing that are almost unbearably beautiful. Grace finds herself in a difficult time in her life -- her job's in peril and her father's dying -- and it seems the angel has come along at just the right time. He helps her to come to terms with her life, but he also comes with a bit of havoc (imagine your body disappearing before your eyes, imagine!), and as Grace looks back at her childhood, at her father's strange, inappropriate wig, the story makes sense.

But often, aspects of this book just don't come together in the same way, and its far too convoluted for my tastes. Imagine a chicklit scenario (young woman trying to find herself working for a dating television show), with a bit of Legion (except he's not a wicked angel, but someone in between trying to earn his wings), and BBC Drama (the dying father) thrown in -- the book simply doesn't make sense.

It's a shame because I adored, adored The Gathering. I felt like all of Enright's formidable talents, her sharp perception, her angst with family life, was put to good use. In The Wig My Father Wore any good will I had about the former book is lost the moment I reread sections where Stephen the angel attempts to become a contestant on her dating game show. I mean, really? That said, I marked more than one passage as I was reading, especially the more domestic sections with her mother.

But in this one sentence, squeezed my heart as well: "I woke up grateful and sick with grief, as if I could not carry my heart anymore; it had burst and spread, like an old yolk."

Keep those sentences and toss back the rest.

WHAT'S UPCOMING: Still going to trudge to the end of The Third Policeman, if only because it's on the 1001 Books list and I hate not finishing books. There's always something good in them, even if it's just one sentence that sticks with me. Then I'm going to read for work, and maybe finish the third Stieg Larsson galley that a friend sent over. It's awesome. I think the charges he's anti-feminist are bollocks, BTW.

Whew, that's enough rambling for today.

READING CHALLENGES: Enright's Irish, so that's one for Around the World in 52 Books.

TRH Movie - Shutter Island

Oh, how it disappointed me. I actually fell asleep in places and found it all kind of tedious. Don't get me wrong, I love Scorsese, DiCaprio and Lehane in equal measures, but the combination here didn't quite work. The movie wasn't scary enough -- sure it looked beautiful, the storm scenes were particularly awesome -- and there were way, way, way too many flashbacks. The whole picture could have been shorter, tighter and creepier.

As Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) pukes down below a ferry taking him and his partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), across the harbour from Boston to Shutter Island, an infamous institution for the criminally insane, the film sets up the premise: what is exactly going on over there? As US Marshals, Teddy and Chuck are there to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients/inmates, a young woman who drowned her three children. As the weather gets worse, so does the state of the case, and soon Teddy and Chuck are embroiled in a "is it all as it seems" plot that plods forward.

The film never picked up steam. Sure, the performances were fantastic, the assembled cast quite amazing, but there was just something missing -- ahem, action -- that would keep the film from stalling left, right and centre. I kept asking my RRHB if he recognized the twist, and he picked it up sooner than I did when I was reading the book (read: not until the end when I gasped and said, "NO!" and then had to reread the last few pages again). But a good twist does not a good movie make if you can't build it up properly for the first 1.45 hours in. The world needed to be better established, we needed to feel less in on the joke, the clues needed to be far less apparent.

Annnywaaay, I had taken the day off to go to the doctor's (excellent visit BTW) and finished my other work (Classic Starts) earlier than expected, so I was glad to be able to squeeze in a matinee. There's just something delightful about going to the movies in the afternoon in the middle of the week. If I were unemployed, I'd do it all the time.

But Shutter Island? It gets a 6 out of 10. However, it's great the film's grossed so much already, at least it means Scorsese and DiCaprio are free to live another day and make more films together. The Departed is still my favorite picture of the last few years.

#14 - Cool Water

Dianne Warren's new novel, Cool Water, tells the story of good people, a whole town full of them. That's not to say their lives are easy or to be taken for granted, sure her characters have strife, but they also have substance and decency. Set in Juliet, Saskatchewan, the multi-perspective novel takes place over the course of about thirty-six hours. When I first started reading, and especially because the book opens with a horse race between ranch hands, I thought the book definitely had tones of Annie Proulx, all windswept, sand, and sorrow. But while the introductory vignette introduces us to the setting, the small town (population 1,100 or thereabouts), none of the characters reappear, except in story, during the rest of the book.

The intertwining stories of Norval, the bank manager; Blaine and his wife Vicki, a couple losing everything; Lee, a young man who just inherited everything; Marian and Willard, wife and brother of the deceased Ed; and Hank, an ex-rodeo cowboy-slash-farmer, unfold slowly, in delicate increments. Many have trouble sleeping and the whole book rolls out like those long hours in the night when one feels as though they're the only person on earth awake. Warren has a delicate touch, but that doesn't mean her writing reads overtly flowery or painfully self-aware (like so many Canadian novelists sometimes come across). In no way is this novel overwritten, either.

In fact, there's a patience to these stories, and the truth of the lives of these characters comes out in the details of the day-by-day. There's a beautiful line midway through the book that goes something like this -- that the nature of the day can change easily over night, day separate from night, like how one breath separates life from death -- I didn't mark it so I can't find the exact phrasing, but it struck me as unbearably true.

Lee's story resonated especially with me. Both of his quasi-adoptive parents have passed away and he's left behind on the farm; it's where he wants to be, but he's finding life alone in the house a difficult transition, dust collects, clothes go without being mended. When a grey Arab horse magically arrives in his front yard, he sets off for a marathon ride that echoes the book's first chapter. It's not even that the journey is epic -- 100 miles -- it's more what it signifies for Lee, a final transition from boy to adult, a man on his own farm, a man with his own horse. Lee's not the only one making a transition to a new chapter in his life throughout the book.

Cool Water remains full of characters whose lives are changing, sometimes irrevocably, but the novel's also about the small decisions that make up a day: whether to go to town or do your chores, whether to finally finish your to-do list, whether to round up the cattle immediately or get back together with a nincompoop ex-boyfriend. When you put them all together, the picture that unfolds isn't epic but human, and there's something utterly familiar throughout the pages -- but at the same time, interest in the story never wanes. It's a hard balance to strike.

The other parts of the book that I truly enjoyed were the will-they / won't they between Marian and Willard. They've been living together, without Ed, the actual person who brought Marian into the house in the first place, for nine years. She's desperate to tell him something; he's desperate for her not to leave now that her husband has passed away. Their stories are full of feelings that go unspoken and unleashed potential -- it's truly delightful.

I'm not going to lie, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. My intern, Amanda, who's reading it too, said that it's Annie Proulx meets Alice Munro, and I think she's right, except much of the story lacks the latter's biting sense of humanity, if that makes any sense. When one reads Alice Munro, and I'm not for a minute suggesting she isn't the best short story writer in the history of Canadian literature, there's always an underlying toughness, a sense that life always takes a wrong turn, disappoints. In Cool Water, life's disappointing for some, but that cynical streak isn't as present. I'm rambling, I know. Let me finish by just saying that Warren's novel was a truly lovely surprise this week.

READING CHALLENGES: Well, indeed, this title would count towards this year's Canadian Book Challenge. I'm not even sure where I am with that one...maybe this weekend I'll take a moment to figure it out.

MOVING ON: I'm still trying to get through The Third Policeman and The Wig My Father Wore as my Irish reads for March. I'm also compiling poetry for April. Happy St. Patrick's Day peeps!

TRH Movie - Bright Star (And Other Rants)

Before I even start discussing Jane Campion's Bright Star, which I watched this weekend after finishing up the third round of edits on my latest Classic Start manuscript, I wanted to just take a moment to say how well-deserved the Oscar wins for The Hurt Locker were. I'm amazed at the commentary I've read over the last few weeks -- how journalists and pundits and bloggers were all shocked that it (rightfully) beat out Avatar for the top prize. Let's just set aside all the movie-making wizardry for a moment, take Avatar out of its shiny box and you're left with an awful script, a mediocre (at best) storyline that's derivative and almost insulting in places, and dialogue that made the writer in me wince almost throughout the entire picture. It's the Nickelback of movies, as I've said often and to everyone who'll listen.

Just because a picture's small doesn't mean it's not worthy of the awards. It's not the movie's fault that no one went to see it. In fact, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to watch smaller movies as multiplexes are businesses driven by the bottom line and art house cinema goes the way of the publishing industry as of late. The whole purpose of an award isn't to celebrate the movie that made the most money. Sure, there were interesting technological advances with Avatar but that got old about two minutes into the movie, and then you're stuck with the Pocahontas meets Dances with Wolves meets Every Movie Cliche meets Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Annoying Characters that Cameron "intends" we consider a "movie."

Also, I'm not sure if anyone else has reported on the irony of making the world's most EXPENSIVE film of all time, which must have used up bucket loads of energy, encouraged (nay, demands) people see the film wearing one-use glasses (sure, they're "recycled" at the end of the picture, but still), and drove piles and piles of garbage by way of concession stand sales because of the sheer number of people seeing the picture, and then having its director bang on about the ENVIRONMENTAL message in the film. Seriously, yawn.

My point? Right, that The Hurt Locker, like many small films, didn't have the marketing muscle behind it to drive huge audiences. The right people saw the film. The right people brought that picture to light, and its wins were terribly well-deserved. Money does not equal great art, if it did, men like John Keats would not have died in poverty, which brings me to the original reason I wanted to write about Bright Star, Jane Campion's equally small film that will reach an equally small audience, that so many gems of both books and films get lost when faced with competition from the big studios. I mean, I don't even know Bright Star made it to theatres in Toronto, and we're not an insignificant market.

Annnnywaaay.

Campion's films, to me, feel very literary. If they were books, I'm sure I'd sit curled up on the couch and not be able to stop reading until the very last page. Bright Star tells the story of the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawn, who fell in love but never got the chance to spend their lives together; after all, the poet died penniless in Italy after succumbing to tuberculosis at the age of 25. The title comes from the poem Keats wrote for Brawne, and it's a sonnet he apparently revised until his death.

Bright Star tells the story from Brawn's perspective -- it opens with a lovely shot of Fanny sitting by a window sewing in the early morning. She's hard at work on her task (and was quite well-known for both her fashion prowess and her excellent seamstress abilities) and the light coming in from the window highlights the intricate and delicate nature of the project. Because the Brawns (widowed mother, younger brother, younger sister) live in close proximity to Keats (they rent a house from his friend, George Brown), he becomes an everyday focus for Fanny. Of course, there are struggles -- money for families without an income, money for starving artists, the importance of an artistic life, the love/hate relationship between Fanny and George Brown over Keats's affections -- but in the end, Campion resists traditional embraces, and there's no Hollywood ending (read Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice) to her film.

Abbie Cornish plays Fanny with a fierce independence. She's proud, honourable and feels her emotions deeply. British actor Ben Whishaw plays Keats, slender, gifted, and terribly troubled, not only because of his failing health, but of the complex emotions love stirs for him. Whishaw plays "tortured" very well -- there's an incredible scene in the book where the complex triangle between Brown, Brawn and Keats comes to a head and, without spoiling anything, it was riveting. It took me forever to place him, but he played Sebastian Flyte in the terrible medicore remake of Brideshead Revisited that came out a couple years ago. I thought he was terribly miscast in that film, thankfully, he's much better here. Mainly I was surprised to see Paul Schneider playing Brown (with an odd "Scottish" accent that often slipped into I don't know what) and displaying the same magnetism that he brought to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford in Bright Star.

The costumes, the hues that seem to embrace the entire film (whites, greys) and the absurdly beautiful wildflowers that seem to abound, all contribute to the film's overtone of Romanticism. It's as if Campion set out to prove to sceptics like me that it is possible to bring the philosophy of the movement to the big screen. I felt deeply embraced by the sensibility of the film, if that makes sense, by the fact that it's impossible to rationalize emotions, as much as it's impossible to entirely scientifically deconstruct nature, and the relationship between Fanny and Keats certainly proves that theory.

All in all, I'm glad I gave up working on the novel a little early on Sunday afternoon to squeeze in this film. Highly recommended for easily persuaded romantic literary types like myself.

#13 - Then We Came To The End

Oh, I fell hard for you from the very moment I cracked open your spine. Your story, about a collective of young people who work at a Chicago advertising agency during a time when the country was facing tough economic times. You have such a way with words, with storytelling, that's unique, modern, and terribly engrossing. Sometimes, you're sentences were so lovely, my heart ached a little in turn.

Sometimes, because your story was so much like events in my own life, I could recognize myself in your characters -- the close-knit working quarters, the ambitious feeling of being young, in your first or second real job, and having routines. I'd imagine it's hard to write a convincing novel about something as mundane as work, but you manage to make it feel relevant, current and interesting. I think, in a way, anyone who works in an office environment can relate to the trials and tribulations of being "walked Spanish down the hall." Of the resentment and anger you feel, of the pressure to move on maybe before you're ready, of the way life sometimes forces you in a direction you never imagined.

Your story rolls along, and you feel like you're sitting on the dock on a hot summer's day, being lulled by words instead of waves. Even when you are writing scenes, stories, thoughts that have been said so many ways before, your story still feels original. Maybe it's your voice. Your use of "we" throughout. Maybe it's how you never give in to the apparent. How you continuously surprise us with your narrative -- sure you deal with topics that can be construed as "well trodden territory" (breast cancer; angry, belligerent ex-employees pulling a Michael Douglas) -- but your book never takes the easy way out, you never write what's expected.

Thank you.

Last Week In NYC

I was in New York City all last week, both for work and for pleasure. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll have been kept abreast of the many celebrities we saw in our travels. Odd, because of the nature of the weather (holy snow batman) but fun because I always like imagining what people are like in real life. We did not, however, see Ethan Hawke, which would have made me so dizzy with excitement I don't know if I'd ever recover. As my RRHB likes to tease me, if we ever did, he'd walk right up to the man and profess MY undying love. Heh.

We saw Catherine Zeta-Jones carrying a huge umbrella and smoking as she walked near the Natural History Museum on the Upper West Side. She's teeny-tiny. That Friday afternoon we spent over four hours wandering the halls and looking at all kinds of marvelous things. The only problem being my sh*tty North Face boots that leaked and which have even started to fall apart a mere months after buying them.

The next day we went for a nice walk in Central Park (I took a great photo of what it looked like with all the snow) and then headed to the Lower East Side to wander around. While we were at Katz's deli enjoying a fantastic sandwich, Jake Gyllenhaal was there with a photographic crew who were taking photos of him wearing some really snappy clothes. He laughed a lot, and was very kind to everyone in the restaurant. My RRHB said, "How come he didn't recognize me?" When he first noticed he was there. Funny. On the way out, one of Blair's cronies from Gossip Girl was hanging outside Katz's with her friends, her name is ridiculous, and so I am not going to type it. Judge me if you will. Then, coming back up Broadway we walked right by Chloe Sevigny.

Then, we shopped. A lot.

We had dinner with a friend in the East Village, and by Sunday AM we were both exhausted. Still, we rallied and wandered through a magnificent exhibit at the International Center of Photography on Sixth at 43rd -- it was right by our hotel anyway. More walking. We spent a good chunk of time at the Library looking at their free exhibits -- Candide and maps.

Again, more shopping. Then a little stopping for a pint so we could watch a bit of the hockey game before climbing in a car and heading to Newark for the flight home. While checking in our bags, I got a little flustered, and when we passed the next person in line, she smiled kindly at me. That person? Naomi Watts. She was on our flight to Toronto, and I'm not going to judge, but she was reading In Touch magazine. That made me smile. It must be hella odd to pick up one of those rags as airport reading and find pictures of your friends. Being a mainly Canadian flight, no one bothered her, but she did do a lot of the "I'm looking at my Blackberry because I don't want to seem like I'm standing here all alone" stance that so many of us are familiar with. I'm a pro at that stance.

And now a whole week has gone by. I've got goals this weekend, both for my novel and for my latest classic start, and am taking Monday off to complete them (along with going to the dentist, ugh). I'll just be very glad to be done both. My brain is too full of all kinds of stuff these days to settle down.

The photos from the trip are up on my Flickr. The shot of the socks made me laugh -- that someone tried to die out their soppers stuffed in the stones of the public library rang quite true for me. On the Friday of the big snow storm, I took off my socks in the museum and wandered around trying to dry them out and leaving a nasty, smelly-smell behind me for anyone daring to come near us. Ah, the human body.

#12 - Invisible Man

My goal for February was to read a couple books for Black History Month. Not surprisingly, I managed one: Ralph Ellison's classic, Invisible Man. The novel is substantial, both in its scope and narrative approach. It took me ages to read--and I abandoned it at one point and picked up a different book, read magazines, anything really to escape the relentless story.

The title, metaphorical, not literal, refers to the narrator's lack of identity as a black man. He can walk down a street and no one sees him. He can stand on the street and people will pass on by as if he wasn't even there. Invisibility -- blessing and a curse -- defines his life. And what a troubled life, kicked out of school (not his fault), and settling in New York City, things go from bad to worse for the man. The novel, which was first published in 1952, and it was interesting to read it now, over fifty years later. Ellison's writing style, while imbued with the tone and tenacity of the time, doesn't feel dated. In fact, the book reminded me a lot of The Best of Everything, not in its subject matter, characterization or plot, but more because of its uncanny ability to bring the story to life and embed in a very particular time and place.

My 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die tome suggests the novel has existential themes, and I'd agree, the narrator can't help but contemplate his existence; it's the purest form of a Manichean dialogue, race goes beyond allegory, it's essential and he's essentially being defined against it by just about everyone he comes into contact with him. There were moments when the cruelty of the world became almost too much for me to bear -- I turned away like I did when I watched Inglorious Basterds, when the violence, meant to be too much, shocked me into tears.

I was first supposed to read Ellison's masterpiece in university. At the time, I was too wrapped up in Faulkner, a writerly obsession I carried with me from high school. Since then, I've carried my same copy around with me from apartment to apartment, keeping it on that metaphorical 'to be read' someday shelf with many other books from school. Slowly but surely, I'm working my way through a lot of them. Because I read so much modern Can Lit, and let's face it, books that are published by the houses where I worked over the last five years, I've been rebelling a little. When I go to the shelf I'm inspired to pick up big, heavy books like Invisible Man and give my brain a work out. I imagine writing a paper filled with literary theory, can smell the air in the library as I do research, and think that Invisible Man does exactly what a classic piece of literature should do, it lasts.

READING CHALLENGES: 1001 Books, natch.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: I can't blog about the book I read this week, Emma Donoghue's Room (#13), because it's not out until Fall 2010. But I will say this, it's exceptional -- a literary page turner of the likes I've never read before, and it's become one of my favourite new books of the year. I can't wait to talk to people about it once it's actually published. So I'm going to try to finish the totally absurd The Third Policeman (also a 1001 Book), and a couple other Irish writers because it's March and my theme is, well, Irish writing this month.

Saturday

My RRHB's out and about this morning. He was up and gone before I even contemplated what being awake actually means. Still, hours later, I'm the same. Half-asleep, kind of dazed, and contemplating writing. Not the idea of writing. The actual fingers-to-the-keyboard-get-some-good-work-done-look-at-all-this-time-you-have writing. We have no food in the house, but there's a grocery store literally next door. Even that effort seems like too much when you had a shitty night's sleep and your brain remains muddled.

It's been a busy week. On Thursday night we went to see a rough cut of Small Town Murder Scenes, the film (somewhat) inspired by my RRHB's second record. Then yesterday we were at The Sixth to see Andrew Penner and The CFL Sessions (Henry Adam Svec). Work's been predictably crazy and all next week I'm in NYC for work/holiday (first half work; second half weekend getaway).

Funny, I was so taken in by Henry Adam Svec's CFL Sessions and his delightful storytelling -- which caught me off guard -- that I found myself uttering, "oh, how nice!" when he started talking about song collecting, archiving music, Lead Belly and the prison system, pure "Music," and this fictional character of Staunton R. Livingston that I was actually a little upset when my RRHB told me that it wasn't real. The laughter in the room turned ironic, which isn't a bad thing, just different from my original interpretation. The music was lovely, aching a little, a bit like Bob Wiseman, and when my RRHB and I were talking about that he said, "Wrench Tuttle wasn't real either and you love that record." And I said, "WHAT?" Shows you how much I know.

Andrew Penner came on around 10:30. The photo's above. He has an uncanny ability to create an entire song's worth of music by just his voice and a couple of instruments. It sounded like an entire band. I admire that -- it's kind of akin to someone writing much bigger than they are too. Long, luxurious sentences that invoke choruses of people standing behind the writer egging them on.

Yes, I'm tired. But I wrote this sentence sitting in the venue last night. I liked it then, I think it's kind of cheesy now: "He could learn to live without them, like eyes adjusting to the light, everything would eventually clarify."

All The Ladies In The House: A Question

A very intelligent and charming friend of mine recently finished Eat, Pray, Love and came to very different conclusions about it than I did.

Me: "I threw that book across the room it made me so mad. I hate the voice so much."

She: "But why do you think so many women are reading it and wanting to abandon their lives; shouldn't you give it a chance just based on that fact alone?"

She is, of course, correct. So. I'm asking you, reading friends, should I give it another chance and if yes, why, and if no, why not?

#11 - The Girl Who Played With Fire

So, being in the book business and all means that sometimes it's a good idea to read something everyone else reads. That can be an incredibly painful experience (see: Twilight and The Da Vinci Code), but sometimes the masses, they surprise you. Sometimes, the masses just get it right (see: The Book of Negroes) -- which is exactly the case with The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stiegg Larsson.

I could not put this book down, I kid you not. It's a traditional "good whack on the head" Swedish mystery starring a politically charged magazine editor, Mikael Blomkvist, a brilliant but psychologically damaged computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, and the cops -- each racing to solve the same case. The murders in question, a couple, one a journalist and the other a PhD student, and a lawyer, happened relatively at the same time and all evidence points to Salander, wait, let me rephrase, all circumstantial evidence points to her, which is the point that Blomkvist and Lisbeth race towards, proving her innocence. Of course, they come up against many obstacles along the way, and it all makes for very good reading.

Larsson's internationally bestselling books have surrounded me while on the subway. And I resisted. I tried as hard as I could to ignore all the good things people were saying. All the recommendations, and it's not as if this review is free of criticism. There are elements to Larsson's writing that betray his journalistic roots -- he uses way, way too much extraneous detail and often digresses to make points, get out a history or fill in details that are simply unnecessary. I think, had he written the whole 10 books as he planned before his untimely death, a lot of this would have cleared itself up. You learn from doing -- novels don't need to be 500 pages long unless they're Russian, right?

But I like the characters so much, Salander's damaged but brilliant, which is always a good combination in a mystery novel. Blomkvist's principled and determined, and he reminds me of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander, a character I enjoy so very much because he's simply who he is, if that makes any sense. He's just well written, and that's the way I feel about Blomkvist too. Also, there are twists I didn't expect, and that does not happen often. On the whole, it's no wonder that so many other crime novelists are feeling a bit of a pinch -- the entire world seems to be reading these books, and I don't blame them.

Oh, and I'm pretty excited that I can use this as perhaps the one and only Around the World in 52 Books entry for 2010, as Larsson's Swedish and that totally counts. So much for not having reading challenges this year.

WHAT'S NEXT: I'm going to finish Invisible Man for Black History Month, try to squeeze in a little Zora Neale Hurston, although I'm not sure what to read of hers since I've already read There Eyes Were Watching God and my experience of that book (when I read it) was so perfect that I don't want to ruin it with a reread.

TRH Movie - Fish Tank

We were supposed to go up north this weekend but an unexpected illness with our cat and a visiting friend from NYC had us changing our mind at the last moment. I'm sad not to see the cottage in the winter but I've got so much work to do that the extra-long weekend will surely fly by. Feeling a little, ahem, under the weather (read: hungover) meant the RRHB and I settled down this afternoon and watched Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold's exceptional film about a 15-year-old girl growing up in a terrible housing development in England (somewhere in Essex, if the NY Times is to be believed).

Fish Tank captures a moment in young Mia's life so raw and dangerous that you spend almost 100% of the film crushing the pillows on the couch in your fists you're so worried about her. Raised by a mother who spends more time drinking, smoking and fucking than parenting and a accompanied by a younger sister who's on exactly the same path does not a great environment make. Mia's rage, frequent and unyielding, coupled with her hormones leaves her confused about her life; she's terrifically naive but unyielding and street smart, and her life has her running just about everywhere. It's as if her mouth, frequently swearing and often pouting, is connected to an even shorter fuse; she has no frame of reference for happiness, she makes it all up as she goes along, and it's a miserable life.

Enter Connor (Michael Fassbender from Hunger, another great underrated film) and he's electric. He's Mia's mother's new boyfriend, comes into the kitchen shirtless and unannounced, watches her try out some dance moves as she boils water for tea. He's got a great smile, he's encouraging, and for a moment you can't tell whether he's sinister or simply friendly -- it's a balance that Connor achieves for most, and I highlight most, of the picture. Without any positive male roll models, hell, without any role models at all, it doesn't take long for Mia to react to his kindness; she's got a crush, but has no way to properly express herself. Connor takes advantage of the situation but for a while you give him the benefit of the doubt, especially after one majestic day they spend out of the city.

Self-taught, Mia practices her hip-hop, dance crew moves in an abandoned apartment above her own, drinking to stay numb (I'm inferring) rather than drunk, she practices and practices, imagines it's the way out. Encouraged by Connor, she applies to audition for a local club -- plain as the nose on your face the kind of dancing it is -- but Mia doesn't realize, has her dreams resting on becoming part of a crew. She's awkward, angry and frequently explodes, but you can't help but want her to just get out because she's also endearing, honest, and smart beneath her dirty jumpers and too-black eyeliner.

Arnold keeps the camera close to Mia at all times, up tight and in her face, echoing the character's personality. It's summer and there's a lightness to the housing project -- but it's unbearably bleak too -- kids are outside having fun, but it's not good honest fun, it's "what are they up to now" kind of fun, and you imagine half of them will either be on drugs or in jail over the course of the next few years. Little hope spills out all over the concrete and even when Mia stares out into the distance, to the city and country beyond, you get the sense that there's no freedom in the view, that even if she wanted to she couldn't leave.

There are plenty of words one could use to describe Katie Jarvis's Mia. Her performance is raw and heartbreaking, and seems to come from a place she knows well. Apparently, she was discovered while having a shouting match with her boyfriend at a train station -- Fish Tank is her first feature film. It's the kind of performance that feels so real, that elicits such an emotional response, that you can only praise the director for working in such a way to capture it on film. It's one of my favourite films so far for 2009. Certainly a million, gazillion times better than the dreck that's Avatar. Not an honest moment in that film, that's for sure.

[Um, ew, should I be freaked out that the Google Ad Sense ad that sat beside me while I was posting this review was for teen Christian counselling? /Shiver].

#10 - The Parabolist

Because I was reading an ARC for The Parabolist, I didn't get a chance to see the book's package (the cover, right) or know anything about it beyond the fact that a friend from the publishing company sent it over to me. For the first half of the novel I didn't even realize it was a mystery -- or thriller, I should say -- and thought Nicholas Ruddock's writing reminded me of a Canadian Nick Hornby with a little Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother tossed in.

I'll have to admit that when I discovered Ruddock's writer/doctor angle, it did make me a bit weary -- I felt that Vincent Lam's debut was heavily over-praised, he's a good short story writer but I'm not sure that book was worthy of the Giller, and it certainly makes for a terribly mediocre, melodramatic, rambling, muddled television show. I honestly thought, "oh, yet another doctor who writes. Yawn."

Annywaauy, I'm happy to say that Ruddock won me over. Treading over familiar Lam territory, The Parabolist follows a group of first-year medical students. The narrative spins around itself, and around its characters like tidal waves. Time moves forward and back, perspective consistently shifts, and yet, I never lost my way. I enjoyed the fact that the book was set in Toronto in what I assumed was the '70s (it cost $.10 to use the telephone!), and the medical students were cloyingly interesting, their interests far ranging past the core science they're learning for their degree into poetry, writing, and social issues.

John and Jasper Glass take their first year classes with the beautiful Valerie Anderson. The Parabolist, Roberto Moreno, a disaffected young Mexican poet, lives next door to the Glasses -- he's staying with his aunt and uncle in Toronto, and after a series of coincidences, begins teaching the first years poetry (something about them having to be well rounded to be good doctors). A number of mishaps unravel their expectations and form the novel's central plot, slowly pulling in new characters, quietly dispelling of those who are no longer needed. There's a strange subplot that involves Jasper and John's odd professor of a father but that's really the only string that didn't get tied up or become terrifically unraveled by the end of the book (he's trying to publish an odd book on French phrases with a small university press).

In addition to the series of mishaps, there are also serious crimes. From the fun, flirty nature of the book, I didn't expect the violence. It's not your stereotypical crime novel, it's definitely a hybrid -- more Nick Hornby meets Law and Order Toronto with a sense of humour, poetry and some sexy students thrown in. Ruddock's pace is relentless, the book hums along combining the antics of the younger kids with the developing mystery (whose crime work is lead by Detective Andy Ames [If I have one complaint it's with the names, sheesh "Andy Ames," "Roberto Moreno," they're all a bit too neat, in a way]) until it reaches a slightly shocking conclusion.

As per usual, I'm not going to spoil anything by revealing too much of the plot. Let's just say that I actually read the last bit of the book a couple of times so I could be sure that I understood exactly what happened and even then, it's not 100% clear. That's not a bad thing -- the ending kind of balances what Ruddock tries to achieve throughout the entire book, that equilibrium between the obvious and the interesting, the cliched and the adventerous, the apparent and the surprising. On the whole, I enjoyed the book, with its focus on medicine and poetry, life and death, love and hate, obsession and compulsion, and look forward to seeing what Ruddock comes up with next.

#9 - The Value of Happiness

The subtitle of Raj Patel's The Value of Nothing questions 'why everything costs so much more than we think.' It's an intelligent, dense book that explores our modern society, its economic context, and the very real implications of our lifestyles. Patel sustains his main thesis, that the true value of goods and services are completely at odds with their prices as set out by the market, while people never give it a second thought. Patel wrote an amazing piece of added-value content for our Book Guide here that explains, in short, the kinds of material things we pay heavily for but that are relatively cheap.

I'm not going to lie, this isn't an easy book to read -- Patel looks at everything under a microscope, he digs deep into economic theory and pushes the reader to think hard about what he's saying. The very idea that, as a society, we are blind to the terrible impact our consumerist ways are having on the world around us despite seeing it, literally, every day, is compelling. In ways, it's easy for me to support Patel's work. I believe in his politics, sit slightly to the left, and have already been convinced that we need to change as a society before we ruin everything. Like Patel, I believe the first step to change is concerted dialogue about the issues, exactly the kind of thinking that is represented here.

However, what really struck me about the book concern post-colonialism. It's not surprising to me that issues with modern economics are so essentially tied up in old colonial models. We don't think about it everyday. We don't turn on our work blackberries and think, "hey, I'm exploiting the Congolese today." Has anyone else out there read King Leopold's Ghost? Hasn't the Congo been through enough? But I can't stop it -- I don't have a personal cellphone but I do have my BB and I use it all the time, every waking moment, and I don't think twice about what went into building it or sourcing it or the power that it takes to use it. I send money every month to David Suzuki and the WWF to try and balance out my consumption. Somehow, I feel ashamed that I'm not doing enough.

You can't be faint of heart when you read this book. You can't expect to be unchanged. And you can't imagine you'll keep living your life as you had been living it. Once you know the true value of what we consume, the cost to human life, the cost to the planet, you'll think hard and then you'll think twice.

READING CHALLENGES: The Better You Read The Better You Get. Oddly, I'm, um, not actually finishing the books from my shelves. However, I do feel like reading more nonfiction has reminded me that it's important to challenge yourself with smarty-smart material every once in a while. School's good.

Read an excerpt of The Value of Nothing here.

Ragdoll Rambles #8549323

Things I want from my life at this very moment:

1. Potato chips and dip. Have neither.

2. An Ethan Hawke movie I haven't seen that doesn't suck. Will have to settle for Band of Brothers. A most excellent mini-series.

3. Documentation to make my application for a UK Ancestry Visa smooth as silk. Is next to impossible due to the fact that the very relatives I need the documents from are, unfortunately, deceased.

4. A book club.

5. A writing partner to do page-a-day challenges with. Swapping and all.

6. The end to my "cough due to cold" that's been nagging for two full weeks.

7. More money to donate to charity. Including: Haiti relief (my donation just wasn't enough) and money to save the Grace Hospital.

8. Someone to find this totally awesome EW article about THE fundamental hip hop songs to have in your library. I've looked online; it's nowhere to be found.

9. To be wittier. We had drinks with delightful friends to celebrate a birthday (not mine). Best quip of the evening: "Capital "F" failure -- it's all downhill from the "a"." Sigh. I wish I was that funny all the time.

10. I'm wrapping up my January Nonfiction reading with Raj Patel's excellent The Value of Nothing. Have already started my February is Black History Month reading with Invisible Man. A really good list of perfect BHM reading. Anyone have suggestions?

Social Media Week, Centennial & Me

This morning I went with my work colleague, Steve Osgoode (@sosgoode) to Centennial to speak to publishing students about online and, specifically, online marketing. It's invigorating and exciting to speak to kids (or students; they're not all youngsters) who are starting out in their careers. I can see how/why teachers find their jobs so fulfilling. Bright eyes and bushy tails and all that...

Then, this afternoon I sat on a panel for Social MediaWeek Toronto headed up by writer Arjun Basu (@arjunbasu) with Julie Wilson (@bookmadam) and Erin Balser (booksin140). It was an odd experience. Usually I am terrified of speaking in front of a large group, but because there were three of us, the pressure was off -- the same with earlier today, with Steve. The biggest problem I have, and will continue to have, is simply talking too much. Anyway, I'm going to spew some thoughts right now that came from my day today:

1. Miscommunication throughout companies can be deadly. It's no wonder that people don't know how to communicate or use social media when the basic fundamentals of getting proper, informed, well, information out to the people at the front lines of your business sometimes isn't even possible. Does Twitter change this fact? Not necessarily but it certainly amplifies it when there's a problem.

2. Not a single person thinks the same thing about the future of publishing. The question came up, "where do we think it's all headed," and I was flippant, said something about how we should wait for the iPad before making any prognostications. What I didn't say is that the moment that Apple device hits shelves, it's a different game. There are few moments when you're in an industry that has such momentous change. For the music industry it was Napster, file sharing and the collapse of the old models -- they melted like icebergs, for publishing folks, it's a bit different. We have the knowledge and the need to move things forward in ways that maybe the music business didn't have; it'll just be interesting to see where we end up. Hopefully, we'll empower authors, instill a sense of urgency in how our business needs to change, and step up to the plate. We're in the moment. It's inspiring.

3. Summing up your life in a bio is never satisfying. My professional bio reads so boring: [she] worked at Alliance Atlantis [read: was Executive Producer of many major branded web sites], Random House [was given a chance by someone who saw potential in me; that changed my life]; and ended up at HarperCollins [has a love/hate relationship with her current job; left the House simply because she couldn't stand the commute; read nothing more into it]. Here's what they didn't mention: has completed one solid draft of her first novel, has written many, many abridged classics for kids, is a published poet, has written tonnes of movie reviews, is married to an independent musician, blogs, reads and blogs some more, has a crazy-ass disease that almost killed her twice and ruined her health forever, but she survived just to almost die again this summer when her appendix ruptured. Somehow, that can't be captured in either 140 characters or a work-related bio.

4. People want to be noticed. They want to be heard. This doesn't change because you're in a public forum or not in a public forum. This is the power of social media. Now I suppose all that matters is whether or not you care if people are listening. For a long time, I've struggled with this -- shy, with little confidence, happy to type, not so happy to talk -- trying to find a balance between the need to be a public person in a very public world and to want to shrink back into the corner and hide, waiting for the popular boy to ask me to dance (he never did, by the way; I'm the better for it, don't you think). How much personality can one internet handle?

5. I love books. I have ever since I was small and winning Read-A-Thons at school and devouring everything with words written on them, cereal boxes, billboards, planes dragging signs, none of this has changed by working in publishing. The sense of wonder I lost by doing two English degrees was reclaimed by seeing Salman Rushdie walk the halls of Random House and spending the day with Curtis Sittenfeld. Today made me happy that other people feel this way too, we stand together far more than we stand apart, us book lovers, high fives and high kicks to that.

My David Bezmozgis Weekend (#8 - Natasha)

Ever since we did the Summer is Short - Read a Story promotion at work, I've had David Bezmozgis's Natasha and Other Stories on my TBR pile. You can read one of the stories from the collection here, at the Globe, from when we expanded our promotion in their online books section. The stories are sparse but not sparing, swift without feeling rushed, and amazing portraits of a family in flux -- immigrants new to Toronto managing to balance their lives on the cusp of old and new.

The collection contains seven linked stories and you simply fly threw them. His prose manages to get to the heart of the human condition without feeling preachy. In style, his writing reminds me a little of Alexander Hemon, although I couldn't put my finger on why. The central characters in Bezmozgis's stories, Bella, Roman and Mark Berman, are Russian Jews who have come to Canada from Latvia, leaving behind their home, their family (although by the end of the book many have migrated as well), and trying to make their way in Canada. I find these in-between stories, from the perspective of first generation immigrants, absolutely fascinating. There's something about the in-between perspective that illuminates parts of Canada, of being Canadian, that those of us born here take for granted. I always liken it to the idea of speaking another language -- it's as if it's a different world.

There are deep similarities between Victoria Day, Bezmozgis's first feature film, which I also watched this weekend on TMN, and the stories. An only child, Mark (the stories) and Ben (the film) struggle with adolescence, balance parental expectations and eventually find a way to define themselves by being inclusive of everything they are. Victoria Day's more of a coming-of-age tale than is contained within the stories. The film resonated because I was a teenager then, and even remember the news stories surrounding the disappearance of Benji Hayward disappeared after a Pink Floyd concert. In the film, Ben loans his hockey teammate some money and then deals with his conflicted feelings once it surfaces that the teen too has gone missing.

The movie has echoes of The Ice Storm and other atmospheric films about teenagers finding their way. Far, far less "teen" than say John Hughes (and I LOVE John Hughes -- it's a comparison point not a criticism), the picture manages to feel Canadian without the earnest-ness of so many of our native pictures (I did love One Week, but man, holy Canadian batman). There are moments of pure beauty within the film making -- even if the performances feel a bit stiff at moments. Regardless, I very much like the ambiguity within the picture, something that Bezmozgis imbues in his fiction as well.

If I had to pick a favourite story, it would be the title tale, "Natasha." But coming a close second would absolutely be "Minyan," the story that closes the collection. Annywaay, I truly enjoyed my David Bezmozgis weekend, I'd highly recommend you give it a try, maybe next weekend?

READING CHALLENGES: I'm counting this towards this year's Canadian Book Challenge. At some point I'll tally up exactly where I am with this but there are other things to write at the moment.

#7 - Burning Bright

As I've been, well, telling just about anyone who'll listen, I've had a whopper of a cold since last weekend. I abandoned my Reading Nonfiction for January for a few days only because my head, eyes and nose hurt so much it was impossible to concentrate on the written word. However, I did manage to finish Tracy Chevalier's Burning Bright.

When the novel opens, the Kellaway family, after suffering through the tragedy of the death of a son, move from the country to bustling London. Tom, a chair maker, his wife, daughter and son, Jem, eventually settle in Lambeth near Astley's Circus, and next door to William Blake. The other prominent family (of scallywags) includes Maggie Butterflield, her elder brother Charlie, and their parents. Their lives intersect with one another over the course of the novel, both because they're neighbours, but also through the burgeoning relationship between Maggie and Jem.

Life in London isn't easy at first for the Kellaways. Jem's mother Anne, at first, stands at the window watching the fine dresses and hats wander by, afraid to conquer the streets on her own. But when their patron (of sorts), Mr. Astley, sends them tickets to the circus, her life is transformed. Thomas and Jem start to work for Astley (who has a scoundrel of a son) as carpenters and soon everyone's smitten with London life, in a way.

But the good tidings can't last, and events put pressure on both families. Whether it's the shock of what Maggie did in Cut-Throat Lane or Jem's sister's disasterous love affairs, soon personal issues send the Butterfields and the Kellaways reeling. Set against the fiery London just before and after the start of the French Revolution, it's interesting to see how history and famous people (William Blake) intersect with the presumably "real" everyday people who would have lived during 1792. While I've yet to read a novel by Tracy Chevalier that captures the emotional resonance and lasting power of Girl with a Pearl Earring, I totally enjoyed Burning Bright. It's very good historical fiction and it really was just what I needed last week.

Sick Day #254836874

Life seems to be about the push/pull for me. I'm doing well with the disease -- I get struck down by appendicitis. I find a job with people I adore; I get restructured right back out on the street. For every yin, there's a yang. I'm imagining that's the way it is with many people in the world. You take your good with your bad and you get on with it. Both my RRHB and I have been felled like a mighty tree by a nasty virus. That's the yin. I'm still waiting for the yang this week.

As of yesterday, I couldn't even stand up for longer than a minute or two without feeling weak, nauseous and dribbling snot everywhere. It's not pretty. Not even a shower could sting the stench of sickness off of either of us. And it's that tired-achy kind of sickness where your eyes hurt and even reading takes too much energy. Hence, bucketfuls of television and movies have been watched. So, I'm bored, as you can probably tell. Here's another top 10 list:

1. We sent our money to the Red Cross for Haiti relief. The small amount we gave doesn't feel like nearly enough but it's something.

2. Even though our spreadsheet doesn't necessarily show it, we're clearly winning in our battle against our budget. Thank you Gail Vaz-Oxlade. There's no way we can be debt-free in three years (massive renovations = massive debt) but we can try. She's so right about debt fatigue. I also wish my quiet OCD-like tendencies would stop me obsessing over pennies but at least it's no longer keeping me up at night now that I've created the Best Spread Sheet Ever (based a bit on Gail's and then some lovely accounting of my own).

3. Ever since I watched this video, I've been dying to read Tracy Chevalier's latest novel. Of course, when I checked my shelves, I discovered I had her previous novel, Burning Bright, (in hardcover no less) already so I started that yesterday evening.

4. I've watched a pile of movies over the last few days. Mainly because neither of us can move from the couches to do, well, anything: Hunger (excellent; disturbing; heart wrenching; shot exceptionally well), Personal Effects (questioning why I will watch Michelle P. in just about anything; love that it's shot in Vancouver and I recognized so many of the locations that it totally ruined the 'suspension of disbelief'), The Invention of Lying (super cute and totally underrated as many films Gervais seems to do end up; it's completely cougarish of me, but I lurv Jonah Hill); and a few more that I'm even forgetting because my brain is mush. After four days of a terrible cold, I'm thinking I need a break from television.

5. Spartacus was far too cheesy for the likes of me. #1. Why are they all so clean and not cold while wearing nothing in the snow? #2. What's up with the blood being the only colour with texture in the whole of the art direction? #3. Does it ALWAYS have to be in slow motion? #4. Sex, sex, sex, sex, yawn. #5. Rome was 100x better.

6. When you're sick, your virtual life is way more boring than even your real life.

7. I could really use a donut. I know it's not good for me but every needs a break from soup.

8. I unwittingly read one of Penguin's Top 75 this weekend (A Year in the Merde), which means if I were to embark upon that challenge, I'd only have 60-odd books to go. Sigh. Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus with these reading challenges.

9. Sometimes, I wish I had a place to be anonymous, totally anonymous, and rant about things. Uncensored. Like Conan in his last week on NBC. I'd keep it classy, too. Maybe.

10. The days are very long when you're coughing like a freight train.

#6 - A Year In The Merde

Colour me foolish: I finished this whole book thinking it was a memoir before realizing that a) the author and the protagonist have different last names and b) wondering why I didn't hear about the political/social events in the news. Sigh. It's been a long week.

Stephen Clarke's cute, engaging novel follows Paul West, an upstart, up and coming restaurateur who moves from London to Paris to accept a job to open a series of tea rooms for France's largest meat producer. Paul finds it hard to settle into life in Paris. Of course, it's difficult to move to a new country, and his learning curve along the way remains hilarious. Having never been anything but a tourist in Paris, I admire how hard he works to fit in -- stepping in all kinds of merde along the way.

The narrative style of the novel reminded me of Nick Hornby -- Clarke has an easy-going way of telling a good story. Even when things go wrong for Paul, and they do (or else there wouldn't be a book), it's still a lighthearted read. Something perfect for a sick day spent at home on the couch with a hot water bottle and some Vick's vapour rub. I've been thinking a lot about what it would be like to live somewhere else, even for a year. And this book gave me some wanderlust -- it was also lovely to read a novel set in a Paris I know and understand, from the perspective of someone who obviously just wants to (eventually) fit in.

#5 - In Defense of Food

Carrying forth with my "I should read more nonfiction. I'll do it in January" mentality, I finished Michael Pollan's excellent In Defense of Food this week. I know Foer's critical of Pollan's approach in Eating Animals, but I still find him to be the most logical, engaging food/environmental writer (and I don't read widely, sorry!) that I've read in years.

The book has a simple edict: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Throughout its 200-odd pages, Pollan explains what he means by these simple statements. He defines what "food" is (it should be recognized by your ancestors, live in the outer edges of a grocery store, and grown) for people who may have been confused (or living under a rock), sets out simple ways to find it, and then encourages them to eat it (at a table, preferably).

The idea of becoming a selective omnivore never would have entered my mind five years ago. When our neighbour planted tomatoes and some herbs in our backyard I was so grossed out at the thought of eating something pulled right from the dirt that I poo-pooed the vegetables before even picking them. And then I tasted them. Now I can't eat a pale, lifeless grocery store cucumber without longingly thinking about the ones that I've grown.

Your muscles have memory, and so do your taste buds, and Pollan's so correct when he says that finding connection to your food by something as simple and inexpensive as a vegetable garden remains a resoundingly rewarding activity. My beans taste nothing like the waxy, protected grocery store bags of veggies I had to buy for Christmas. It might be a silly thing to say, but my crazy, intrusively kind neighbour changed my outlook on food completely. Then Pollan came along and gave me cause to shout.

While the book might linger just a little bit too long on the science and evolution bits, the idea that we're getting it so fundamentally wrong on such a massive scale still catches my breath in my throat. Maybe we can change the world one seed at a time. Maybe we can't. But I won't stop digging in the dirt and doing what I can regardless.