#49 - Petite Anglaise

In all honesty, I don't know what to say about Catherine Sanderson's Petite Anglaise. Written in the chatty, blog-like style the writer developed on her enormously successful blog of the same name, her memoir covers a tumultuous period where Sanderson makes sweeping changes in her life. Having spent the last eight years with her partner, whom she identifies in the book as "Mr. Frog," the British ex-pat now finds her life as a working mom somewhat lacking. While trying to reclaim her identity, she starts her blog, and it opens up a whole new world to her. And when a mysterious man starts leaving comments that cut to her romantic core, Catherine is forced to make some very hard decisions about what she wants out of her life.

The writing was all a little too Eat, Pray, Love for me, and for the most part I found that blog-style writing doesn't always necessarily transfer to a larger book format as well as one would expect. The never-ending descriptions of Paris grow weary after a while (Sanderson never met a view of the Eiffel Tower she didn't love and/or want to describe) and, despite her obvious talents, the whole book felt like it was lacking maybe a bit of an emotional core? I mean, it's not as if Sanderson didn't describe her emotions, but somehow reading Petite Anglaise felt like work. If I was truly engaged (like I was with Kerry Cohen's excellent memoir, Loose Girl), the pages would have flown by.

That said, there's a lot to like about it as well, and I'm so impressed with the story behind the book -- her rags-to-riches blog success, how she made a life for herself and for her delightful daughter (Tadpole) in Paris (a city I adore too and would give my right arm to live in any day), and how she gets swept up in a moment that may have not been the best decision, but takes it all in stride, dusts herself off, and carries on with the same tireless spirit she displays throughout the book.

Chicklit readers will appreciate the passion in the memoir, and I'd suspect the package too, with its pretty brown and pinks, the lovely sillouette on the cover. Maybe it's just me and the fact that I love a little more meat in my memoir, something slightly juicer and far darker than Petite Anglaise can provide. This, of course, is no fault of the author and utterly all my own subjective ideas about the kinds of truth I like uncovered between the pages.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The book on my kitchen table in exactly the spot where I finished reading it this morning. What you can't see in the shot are the twenty-odd tomatoes surrounding it.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: Marilynne Robinson's Home, which I started this week too and am already loving.

Weekend Update

We stayed in the city because my RRHB played a festival in Collingwood on Friday night, which meant that after leaving for summer hours, I had a whole band widow afternoon stretched out in front of me. One guess where I ended up: the garden. I did some weeding, picked some beans for dinner and tried to save as many of the tomatoes as humanly possible. We also had two more cucumbers and there are 4 more zucchinis growing.

The cucumber is waning, dying a slow death on the vine, and I'm actually mourning its going. I've eaten those cucumbers all summer as snacks and it's a huge part of how I'm now winning the 18 Pound Challenge. When I saw the final slicer that I think will actually ripen out of the corner of my eye as I was attacking a weed patch near our lone corn plant that will probably not produce any corn, I actually gasped out loud. About a vegetable. So I brought it inside and tenderly sliced it up for dinner alongside the beans that are a mite bit happier now that I pulled the hulking squash out from in front of them (not to worry, our other squash plants are happily growing like mad just on the other side -- they're even starting to flower and bud).

Annnywaay, my Friday band widow afternoon/evening was spent watching some terribly girlie movies (Miss Pettigrew Lives for Day [utterly fetching and truly wonderful] and What Happens in Vegas [meh; of course, meh]) before passing out at about 10 PM and trying to read some of Marilynne Robinson's Home. Two pages, maybe three?

On Saturday I managed to do more gardening (more weeding; more watering) before meeting Tara for lunch before we went to go see Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. Aw, those pants, still so enjoyable in a totally can't-believe-this-cheesy-movie-made-me-cry-more-than-once kind of way. There were some parts that were so ridiculous that we were laughing when we (obviously) shouldn't have been, but that's what those movies are for. The most hilarious part of the film wasn't even on screen. When Kyle MacLachlan showed up as the artsy drama teacher at Carmen's summer stock, a woman in the row behind us exclaimed, "Oh my god!" Heh. Among other annoyances: why on earth would anyone wear white eyelet to a charcoal drawing class? To any art class? The guy from Swingtown does a terrible Greek accent and is forced to say lines like, "we are terrible at not loving each other." Bridget goes to an archaeological dig and kisses the bones, all the while bouncing around and then PLAYING SOCCER next to the dig. As Tara said, "She's a worse archaeologist than Indiana Jones." But we forgive these indiscretions and even the truly awful pants because they did a really good, honest job of those moments that either change friendship forever or let it evolve as their lives evolve. Those were the parts that made me all teary.

Then it was back on my bike and home to see my RRHB for about 10 minutes before he left for his show at the Horseshoe last night. Meredith came down and met me for a drink beforehand, and then it was off for a night of rock as Fembots played with Cuff the Duke (and I'm so sorry but I don't remember the other opening band as I completely missed them!). A truly fun four beer evening complete with a joke, a very tall man bobbing his head, and a couple that made out on the dance floor while pretending to be in grade eight. They were awesome.

Despite my ridiculous hangover, I crawled out of bed at 7 AM this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. As a result, I finished a book, biked down to the farmer's market in Liberty Village, bought some great vegetables, biked home (HOLY CRAP IT WAS HOT AND HARD), and then cleaned out the fridge all before 10:30 AM. We've already come and gone from Kensington Market and now I have the whole afternoon in front of me to work on my Classic Starts and finish up my last Harlequin assignment for this month. That's if I don't collapse on my keyboard as the dregs of whatever energy I do have left piss out top like the rest of an empty keg (does that even make sense?).

Happy Sunday all.

One Should Not Listen...

...to ridiculously sad songs at work because your mascara will run, people will ask you what's wrong and then look at you funny when you say you're just listening to the radio. Aw, Sufjan Stevens, you sure know how to weep your way into a girl's heart.

Harvest Redux

Today we ate more zucchini from the garden, made into a delicious recipe from Laura Calder's French Food at Home, cooked with the basil that has finally started to grow like crazy. On the weekend, we had the first batch of beans, and I was delighted to see that the purple ones, when cooked, turn green. Plants are so interesting, aren't they?

Tonight, as I mentioned, I picked the basil for dinner and also collected another three cucumbers and broke off another zucchini. I've made piles of really delicious muffins over the last four weeks and learned that the oven at the cottage really sucks (how can it take 2 HOURS for muffins to cook?). I'll make more this weekend and more the weekend after that if we keep getting zucchinis from that one plant.

I have to confess, I really love eating vegetables from our garden. We've used up three tomatoes so far, and even though the plants are a mess (damn you blight, damn you!), I think I'll have enough to make some soup this weekend for lunch next week. Oh, and I brought the one cherry tomato seedling that survived inside to see if it would fare better and surprise, surprise, it's almost doubled in size since I perched it beside our kitchen window.

We had a busy weekend (Sam, Jay and Sadie up at the cottage) and the weather was the nicest it's been since the summer started. I had a swim in the lake on Sunday after working for most the day on my latest Classic Start that lasted for an eternity. We ate great food, kept wonderful company, and I managed to get a pile of work done. With four Harlequin assignments this month (it's a record!), I've had a lot of work-related reading to do, but I managed, at long last, to finish Wally Lamb's exceptional new novel (#49). I started Peter Carey's latest too, and was reminded why I love him and literary fiction so much as the sun warmed my shoulders after I climbed out of the water pruned and happy. And then promptly left the book on the sun deck, which means I won't be able to get back to it until the September long weekend. When I say good-bye to outdoor swimming for another season. I'm not ready for it to end. I'm truly not.

Another In A Long Line Of Lines You Wish You Had Written

Reader, I hurled.

Heh.

Props to Zesty for sending the review to me.

Generation Kill vs. Stop-Loss

Before I start, let us pause for a moment on the fact that I just spent a half-hour making fake blood for work.

Ahem.

The RRHB and I have been watching Generation Kill, the 7-part miniseries by David Simon (the man responsible for The Wire, the best show ever produced for television) about the Iraq war. The series follows a group of highly trained Recon Marines as they follow the chain of command's increasingly stupid decisions and continue to come through their contact with the enemy fairly unscathed. It's also an uncensored look at the war from the point of view of Evan Wright, the Rolling Stone reporter embedded with First Recon who wrote a book about his experiences (with the same title as the show, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War).

To make war drama effective it needs to look and feel real. But Generation Kill takes that even a step further, sure they blow stuff up a la Saving Private Ryan and they talk the talk (everyone is "Oscar Mike" and all kinds of other sweet-ass sayings you get into your head the minute they're uttered on screen), but the actors are so committed to the roles that it's almost as if you're watching a documentary. So much of the current culture around creating art of the Iraq conflict fails for many of the same reasons: it's too austere, it's too bloated, or it's just plain bad. None of these problems plague Generation Kill. All of these problems plague Kimberly Peirce's abysmal Stop-Loss, which we watched this weekend.

Ryan Phillippe plays SSgt Brandon King, at a loss to protect his unit from an ambush, who arrives back in the US thinking he's about to get out a hero (with a Purple Heart for his troubles) when he discovers he's been "stop-lossed" and will need to report back to base to be sent over for yet another tour in Iraq. Finally sensing the futility of his position and of the war itself, he goes AWOL and is on the run for most of the film. Only in BK's world "on the run" means taking off with your best friend's girlfriend (played with a strange swagger by Abbie Cornish), hiding out in lame hotels, getting into fights, visiting A WAR HOSPITAL, attending the ARMY FUNERAL of a member of his unit and never get caught. And (SPOILERS AHEAD) after all of that, after watching one guy basically kill himself, after visiting the parents of another member of his squad that died on that fateful day, he decides to just go back anyway. What the fark? At least give Canada a chance buddy, it's not so bad up here and it'll take Stephen Harper at least a couple of years to extradite you. Yawn.

The whole film is preposterous. Nothing makes any sense, it's bloated, and while the performances aren't terrible, the dialogue is cringe-worthy enough to make you wonder why anyone agreed to make this film in the first place. In sharp contrast, the men in Generation Kill walk, talk, and act like soldiers. They're Recon Marines, as Brad "Iceman" Colbert (Alexander Skarsgård) says, they've had air training, dive training, survival training and they're being wasted on ridiculously silly missions in Iraq, to which someone responds, 'it's sure not Afghanistan,' and they all cheers to the memory of the conflict apparently fought in a way they can respect.

And it's not like Phillippe is a terrible actor, just the opposite, I think. He was wonderful in the under-appreciated gem, Breach, which was one of my favourite films of last year. But in this case, the material is so beneath him. In Generation Kill, the material is so good the men absolutely rise to the occasion, but Skarsgård and James Ransone are so good it's not even apparent they're acting, which you're always aware of when Phillippe and his co-star, Channing Tatum, are on screen. Even if war films aren't your thing, I'd give Generation Kill a try, if only because now that So You Think You Can Dance is over (woot! woot! Joshua woot!) there's really nothing else to watch and not much is happening over at Mad Men just yet. It always comes back to what I'm consistently saying about books -- if the writing is good, then the content is kind of irrelevant, the story will hold up regardless.

Harvest

I wish I could explain my melancholy mood these days. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with me, physically or mentally. If I had to wager a guess, I think it's because I miss the week or two that we usually spend up at the cottage full stop. The racing back and forth from weekend to weekday splits you in half, and it's not as if I don't appreciate the gift my grandparents gave me by hanging on to the cottage after all they went through, it's more that I feel out of myself when I don't spend enough time there.

You can never escape your childhood, I suppose. It lingers there in the back of your mind like a smoky room where cigarettes are now banned, hollowed out and aching in ways that make you wonder. There's also so very much going on right now: work, freelance, Classic Starts, reading challenges, writing, and it's all got to fit into one 24-hour day. The traffic jam of the modern everyday existence.

But behold, a little bit of a miracle in the backyard -- beans! Five delicious, crunchy, yummy yellow bush beans. We were out in the back where my RRHB was showing me our soon-to-be new front door (fabulous!) that he got today (to be installed tomorrow) and he said something about the beans needing stakes, that he didn't think they were growing well enough, and then he said, "Oh look, you've got beans!" Indeed, we did. We each ate one out in the garden and they were delicious. I pulled three more off, came upstairs, took their portraits, washed them off, and crunched them right before dinner. They made my day. I've been surviving on our cucumbers for snacks and now I'm glad I can add beans to the mix. But tell me, can I eat the purple ones too?

#48 - Runaway

When you finish reading an Alice Munro book of short stories, you honestly feel as if you've accomplished something. You feel as though you've put yourself in a long line of people that will be reading Alice Munro short stories from now until hundreds of years from now. They may be reading them in a slightly different world, one that's a little more polluted and with many more people, but they'll be reading the stories none the less. Why? Because there's no way to deny that they're great art -- wonderful glimpses into the lives of extraordinarily ordinary women who make mistakes -- and they're simply marvelous.

Runaway was in the very first package of books I ordered when I first started my job at Random House. The book, in its first hard cover edition, sat on my shelf for weeks, then months, then years. It summered up at the cottage. It wintered there as well. Until I finally committed it to the reading pile as a part of the latest Canadian Book Challenge (Runaway represents #2 in my For the Ladies Challenge) and actually managed to finish it.

Comprised of eight short stories, three of which are linked, the collection has a consistent theme: each of the female protagonists run away in some form or another. Perhaps it's in how they dress or how they act, in how they think or in a physical event that motivates them to make a change in their lives, but its escapism in its different forms. The three linked stories follow the life of Juliet, from when she's a young woman still studying who takes a train trip and meets a man, until she's an older woman, who lives three distinct lives in each of the stories. All three are ridiculously effective and utterly engrossing as Juliet's life takes a marked and unexpected turn that contains such sharp edges as only Munro can write them. But I think my favourite story among the eight would just have to be the penultimate one, "Tricks," for its climax actually made me pull the book to my chest and hug it tight, feeling every inch of the words as if they were a part of my own life, a pain I felt instead of the protagonist, Robin.

The towns are small, but nameless (for the most part), and the setting seems secondary to the inner life of each of the women. They are rich, rich, rich pieces of literature, so perfect in every way that I don't have a single constructive thing to say. For some reason, I always leave Munro on my shelves, I collect her books like they're pieces of china, bits and bobs to be admired in a long line of Can Lit adorning my bookshelves. And every time I actually pull one of the books off the shelf and spend some time with it, I chastise myself for never spending more time with them. They're not to be admired. They're to be enveloped and digested, and then put back on the shelf to age with you, for Runaway is a book never to be given away or loaned to a friend, it's just that good. Oh, sure, I'll recommend it, and then direct you all over to Amazon to get your own copy.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The first few lines of my favourite story, up close and personal.
READING CHALLENGES: As above, #2 in my Canadian Book Challenge for this year.
WHAT'S UP NEXT: Finishing Wally Lamb's mammoth (and ridiculously engrossing) novel on my Sony Reader for work.

The City On A Long Weekend

We're in the city for the long weekend and it's a very strange experience. Of course, the weather's perfect, absolutely gorgeous and bright. The lake would have been just glorious. In the end, it's probably for the best. Our tomatoes have the starting of what looks like blight, so I've got to deal with that today. There's a lavender pot that I haven't replanted yet that's so wilted I'm fearing for its life, and I need to weed like crazy.

I've been searching online for how to deal with my poor, sick plants. It seems that weather might be the cause, that or bad seeds, or just too many things planted in the garden (that's definitely my fault [although the tomato plants have loads of room]). Next year we'll need to make sure we put the tomatoes in a different place. Although right now it looks like only one or two plants are affected, and so I might just sacrifice those for the health of the rest. I'm afraid the tomatoes won't be great this year, but we've been so lucky with the quality of the zucchini and cucumbers, and the rest of the garden is growing so beautifully, that I'm not too worried. It's all good learning for next year, right?

What'll also be good about staying in the city is getting a long, laundry list of things done around the house: cleaning up the outside, clearing away some of the junk from the garage, tidying up, sweeping, all the stuff we never seem to have time to do. Add to that my 'work,': the next Classic Starts title, a freelance copy assignment, some leftover editing, the new story, and if I can cloister myself in my office for most of Monday, I should get a great start on all of it.

I'm also so behind in terms of my reading. Usually the summer is when I catch up, long days spent by the lake deep into some giant tome. But instead, I've been gardening up a storm, visiting, playing Scrabble, talking with my family, spending time with my nephew, and I feel a little out of sorts. I'm convinced it's because I can't actually concentrate on any book with any kind of depth. So, I forced myself out of my rut this morning and finished two stories by Alice Munro, and hopefully I'll finish Runaway by the end of the weekend. That'll put me back on track. Right?

Out Of Touch

Um, I haven't heard of a single book on the Booker longlist. Like, not one. I didn't even know Rushdie had a new novel out. Where have I been?

#47 - How To Be Single

Zesty and I went to Costco the other weekend and I bought a lot of stuff. Well, not a lot of stuff, but I was kind of like a kid in a candy store because I'm not a regular Costco shopper. So, for the bookish girl, seeing giant stacks of books incites a certain kind of glee, so of course I piled a bunch of 'off the list books' (ones that we don't publish or that I can't get reading copies for) into my cart. The first one I tackled was Liz Tuccillo's How to Be Single. (Yes, I'm still on the chicklit kick). What a disappointing book. It's stereotypical, bland, relatively plotless and utterly unbelievable.

The premise -- five single women in NYC in their mid-to-late 30s love, redemption and self-satisfaction -- falls short of actually driving the action of entire novel, so Tuccillo invents an entirely ridiculous 'adventure' for her main character, Julie Jenson. See, Julie's unhappy being a publicist at a publishing company so she decides, on a whim, to march into the publisher's office and pitch a book about "How to Be Single." Julie will travel the world and meet all kinds of single women from all kinds of different countries and then she'll write a book. It's Eat, Prey, Love in spades. Only it's not because what it means is that Julie, THE MAIN CHARACTER AND NARRATOR, introduces the action and her four best friends who only know one another through her, and then LEAVES THE CITY. But she still TELLS THE STORY.

So that means all the stories are told from Julie's point of view, even though she's not anywhere near the action of the other four characters: lawyer Alice (who left her job to be on permanent "man" hunt); Georgia (whose husband recently left her and the kids to take up with a samba teacher); Ruby (overweight and depressed about her dead cat); and Serena (a hippie cook who works for a famous family only to leave to try and become a swami). The whole book is full of situations that are completely and utterly unbelievable. Of course, Julie meets a wonderful man in Paris with only one hitch; he's married, but wait! It's an open relationship! Yawn.

And we could run through the bland things that happen to the other four women but it's not worth the energy it would take for my fingers to type it out. Not one aspect of the book (until we get to the VERY end) is about the women living happy and fulfilled single lives. They're hysterical, depressed, somewhat crazed, and on the hunt for the "right" man the entire time. Tuccillo doesn't break down a single cliche or take the story in any remotely original direction. And, I've got to say, it's honestly some of the worst dialogue I have ever read on paper. For the most part, I wasn't remotely interested in what happened to a single one of these women. Because they didn't feel real. They didn't feel passionate. They were stereotypes of women I see in sitcoms. They were Rachel and Monica, Miranda and Carrie, and with none of the quirks that make those characters endearing or original.

I have to say too, that the premise of the novel, when you first pick it up, is interesting, and I would have enjoyed it a lot of there was a whiff of these women embracing their single lives and actually growing from beginning to end. I've already given my copy away and I don't want it back.

Ranting And Raving

There are days where I wish I was back to being quite anonymous. That way I could say all the things that are swirling around in my mind right now about work, about life, about the glorious weekend we just had, without worrying who might read it or who might see it. It's not that I have to confess. I need to vent. I need to rant a little about how I'm tired of certain things (and, I'll admit, certain people in my workplace). But who doesn't go through the same stuff every now and again? The feeling annoying with people you work with, the feeling invisible at work, the frustration with the work. And it's not like it happens all the time or everyday. For the most part, I'm incredibly thankful to have such a great job, and to work with the people that I work with, but today is an exceptionally rough day and I'd much rather be at home watching Mad Men.

But really, would this job be any better? Perhaps not.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

An Alternate Title: The 18 Pound Challenge

The rain has been unceasing the past few days, which was actually a blessing considering I hadn't watered the garden for the couple of days leading up to the big storms over the weekend. Storms indeed. Stormy moods, stormy weather, stormy clouds in my head, but I managed to shake some of it off this evening after work. The elation of being of the medication has been followed by a period of a bit of panic. There's not a single part of my health that's unaffected by the disease, from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair (mainly grey; nicely covered), and it's tedious sometimes worrying about it all. The latest? My cholesterol remains sky high, despite having already lost some weight and not really eating anything that causes said heights. The result? The doctor has ordered me to lose a total of 18 pounds. It seems impossible. I've been fighting with my body for months, years even, and the pounds just stay stuck like tree sap to a window.

However, now that I'm off the drugs, I'm convinced that at least it's a goal I can achieve. Now that the methotrexate is no longer wreaking havoc on my system, hopefully my body will just rebalance itself. He's given me three months to lose the first five and if I can make that goal he won't put me on the medicine. That's a good motivator. I really need a break from medicine. Four years and then some is a long, long, long time.

Soooo, after a week I've already lost about three pounds. That's just from cutting out sugar and biking to work. And hummmmm, stopping the meds maybe? My Super-Fancy Disease Doctor will never admit that the meds are the sap in the tree-sap-to-window ratio, but it's something I honestly believe. We're also making a conscious effort to eat a little better and not snack as much. At least if I can make it to the 18 pounds, I can forgive the disease even for a little while and simply concentrate on living my life.

Annnywaaay, shaking off the glums was impossible yesterday so we bunkered down and watched a world of Law and Order repeats before falling asleep. I've started to read How to Be Single and it's simply okay. But more on that later once I'm actually done. But today, shaking off the glums was accomplished by hitting the garden out back. The weeds! The weeds! The weeds! But also, the growth, the growth, the growth. I've been re-reading chapters of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle tonight just so we can deal with the overload of zucchini (in pasta, grilled this weekend, in muffins, in cookies). And above? The massive zucchini I harvested today compared to the ones that you'd usually find in the grocery store. One of these things is not like the other, indeed.

What's growing? The beans (all three varieties), the squash, the cucumbers (I had two for dinner; they are delicious), the watermelon, the tomatoes, two teeny cherry tomato plants, the winter squash, the calendula (one lone plant, but still!), the rapini, and I think some of the basil (at long last). We're overgrown in the lettuce department but I'm eating it every morning for breakfast (cashew butter and lettuce on a bagel) so at least I'm making my way through it. And the tomatoes haven't even started to ripen and I'm already thinking about how I'm going to have to convince my RRHB that we'll need to can a bunch of sauce this fall (a whole bunch of photos on Flickr).

I had promised myself that I would grow out of hating gardening. And when I peeled back the heavy, prickly skin of my cucumbers and chopped them up so I could eat their cold, lemony goodness, I knew it was all worth it. The dirty nails. Pulling the weeds. Planting and replanting. Because it's so true, it just tastes so much better when it's grown in your own backyard.

The Moment When You Have Too Much Technology

Packing up my bag moments before Zesty picked me up for a trip to Costco (the first time I've been in many, many years), I through an electrical gadget in there beside my wallet thinking it was my blackberry. Indeed, it was my Sony Reader. Very helpful for lineups, not so great for phone calls. Very indicative of the fact that I have too much technology in my life. Isn't that grand?

TRH Movie - The Dark Knight

Our summer hours were a blessing yesterday as I managed to get home after getting my hair cut well before six, which meant we were at the movie theatre in time to buy tickets and then line up for decent seats for a 7 PM show of The Dark Knight. It's not something we normally do, and I felt a little like a teenager as my RRHB and his friend Nathan went off to pay video games and I held our place in line. (Don't worry, I had a book, on my Sony eReader, which is AWESOME!).

The film is long but doesn't feel that way, action-packed without being overwhelmingly violent (although it's not suitable for the 5-year-olds that were in the audience), and utterly satisfying on every level. There are unavoidable cliches, the romance-that-cannot-be, the stoic-good-guy-cop, the moral dilemmas of a superhero, that could have weighed the whole film down. But what The Dark Knight does that Spider-Man (despite how much I loved the second one) and Iron Man somewhat fail to do, is that it approaches the tedious, necessary plot and/or character developments with an unflinching sense of honesty and commitment that rises above the usual.

It's one hell of a good movie. The story is complex, riveting and engaging. The acting is superb. And the action is, well, really good without all kinds of CGI that sometimes turns other superhero films into cartoonish parodies of themselves. Christian Bale, as Jesse Wente said yesterday morning, might just be the best actor to ever have played Batman. But considering a) I never read the comics and b) I actually kind of enjoyed George Clooney, Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer each in their own ways, I think it's more than him being 'the best.'

He takes the role to a whole other place. He takes the character to a whole other place. He's just as believable as the playboy as he is the superhero. And there's a brilliant scene that I won't spoil between he and Gary Oldman (who I think is the undersung star of the film) toward the end that exemplifies both their skills. What's impossible, as well, is not knowing the tragic circumstances around this being Ledger's last role, and have that not be on your mind the entire time you're watching his tour de force performance. And man, is he absolutely frightening, entirely brilliant and not in the least bit hammy (Lords of Dogtown, that's all I'm going to say).

The movie picks up almost right where Batman Begins left off. With the caped crusader cleaning up the streets of Gotham, the citizens have never been so safe. Add to that the appearance of the new D.A., Harvey Dent (played to perfection, as well, by Aaron Eckhart), and crime might just be on its way to extinction. Enter the Joker (Ledger) whose particular brand of menace can't be understood. In short, he doesn't act like a regular criminal, but more like a terrorist. And he's holding all of Gotham hostage. Now the Batman, Dent and Gordon have more to contend with than an angry bunch of criminals -- they have one utterly unpredictable one who doesn't quite play by the rules. The battle between good and evil, right and wrong, sways all kinds of definitive lines, and the end result is a superhero film that's evolved to finally meet the times in which its playing.

That said, the only problem with so many of these movies is the tragically misused 'love' interest trope of a character. Rachel Dawes is no different. Sure, she's a lawyer and fighting for her own brand of justice, but like Gywneth in Iron Man and Liv in Incredible Hulk, their lives are there simply to be put in danger as impetus for the hero to either act or not act. Would it be that difficult to write a less contrived female character? What a waste of talent in all of those women to be playing such one-sided roles. It's almost as if the writers have worked so hard to update the male characters and bring them securely into this century and have simply left the women behind. Sure, they dress them up in pretty heels and give them jobs, but they're not really doing anything.

Regardless, The Dark Knight not only lives up to the promise of the first film, but utterly surpasses it. It could very well be the best film of the summer. I'm just sayin'...

#46 - Loose Girl

Kerry Cohen's Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity took me a little by surprise. It's not often a book manages to catch me off guard, but from the minute I read the first few sentences of this excerpt, I couldn't put it down. So, I took the whole book with me to the cottage and read it in an evening. I was reading when I should have been sleeping and the rain fell all over the cabin as passionately as rain tends to do in the summer. With my RRHB securely asleep beside me, Cohen's story couldn't help but remind me of all my mistaken times when I confused the wrong kind of attention for the right kind of intimacy.

Told in a writing style that's almost a form of literary short-hand, it's a swift memoir (just over 200 pages) that recounts Cohen's tumultuous tween, teen and young adult years. Conflicted about her parents's divorce, caught between her mother's ambition and need to better her own life, and left behind by friend and foe, she falls deeper into her life of promiscuity.

Navigating adolescence is never easy, and for young girls who grow up traumatized in any way, I'm guessing it gets even harder. No, I know it gets even harder, when there's no one you can really turn to for help. Wanting love is different from wanting any kind of male attention -- but that's a hard lesson for Cohen to learn, one that comes at a great cost to her burgeoning sense of self. She yearns for a boyfriend but never seems to find a boy who'll stick around after sex. And when the nameless, faceless, can't remember hims add up and add up, she needs to come to terms with the fact that all the sexual acts aren't remotely satisfying.

The book, however, is deeply satisfying. Cohen recounts her story with a clear and crisp voice, allows the reader to feel deeply empathetic for what she went through, and there are moments when it's impossible not to see or feel yourself in her shoes. The ending is a little abrupt, but it's not necessarily awkward. It's more that I was enjoying the story so much that I wanted to read on and on -- to see the resolution vs. just imagine it from her implications. Regardless, it's a seductive piece of work for all the right reasons.

Free At Last

This morning was a great bloody morning. I rode my bike to work. Now I know I'm late in doing this but I simply couldn't get my sh*t together before this morning. My timing, however, couldn't have been more perfect as I had totally forgotten I needed to see the Super Fancy Disease Doctor at 9:30. Which meant that I hopped back on my bike and pedaled myself over there just in time for my appointment with one minute to spare.

The good news?

I no longer have to take ANY disease medication!

None.

No needle.

No pills.

Nothing.

It's just for three months. If he sees any disease activity whatsoever they'll put me back on a low dose of prednisone or maybe even back on the needle, but for now, I'm disease and medication free.

The sun is certainly shining.

#45 - Away

The first book in my For the Ladies Canadian Book Challenge of 2008-2009 is Jane Urquhart's Away. The first few moments of this book truly captivated me. I started reading it and didn't want to stop, not for work, not for my favourite TV shows, not for my RRHB, anything. The multi-generational tale of Irish-Canadian settlers powers along like a captivating storm on a summer day. An important story needs to be told, from grandmother to granddaughter (which we find out cryptically that this is new knowledge; for a lot of life the granddaughter believes herself to be a grand-niece) about the history of the family.

The book's title refers to the matriarch, Mary, who becomes Moira one morning after she discovers a young man washed up on the shores of a small island off the coast of Northern Ireland. The experience of him, of his perfect shape and lovely form just before he dies, carries Mary "away." The man whispers, "Moira" to her just as his last breath leaves him, and she falls in love with him, in love with his voice of the sea, in love with this other person she becomes, in love with the water from which he comes. The rest of the first half of the novel concerns itself with the ways Mary comes back from being away. She marries and then has a child they call Liam. And then the famine hits. Her husband, Brian, a schoolteacher and farmer, agrees to let their landlords, two English quasi-fops, send them to Canada.

The pair has another child, a girl named Eileen, and she and Liam become the focus of the story once they're in Canada. The landscape has changed but the epic nature of the novel hasn't and the journey for Eileen and Liam to their new farm near Lake Ontario. There's so much mixed up in the novel that sometimes I think it gets a little lost in its own epic-ness. Characters get swept up in politics and then conflicts are completely forgotten, entire generations are skipped, whole backstories are simply lost, and main characters go off on long journeys and are never heard from again -- but somehow, the novel holds your interest.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book terribly, as my mother would say, warts and all. The mystical nature of being 'away' -- of being at once lost and found to your inner self, is an interesting theme around which to circle a novel. The dichotomy between the old world and the new, of Irish and English, of men and women, of right and wrong, all shift in Urquhart's book. In a way, that's what makes Away such a perfect product of Canadian literature. If I were well back in my M.A. and still studying post-colonial writing, I would probably write one hell of a paper about this book. But I'm not, I'm doing my Canadian Book Challenge and it's a pretty darn perfect title to include in said challenge.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I have a beautiful, collector's edition of the novel that McClelland & Stewart released for their 100th anniversary. While I'm not crazy about the dust jacket design, I do love the cloth treatment with its tender title stamp and pretty grey colour. (Blogger's giving me trouble uploading the photo, so I'll have to try again later -- the link above is to Flickr).

READING CHALLENGES: #1 for the Canadian Book Challenge. I'm already well ahead of last year.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: A review of Kerry Cohen's Loose Girl, and Runaway by Alice Munro.

THE SOUNDTRACK: Currently playing, "You Don't Understand Me" by The Raconteurs. Oddly fitting, I think. The recording of the song allows you to hear the cool, almost-squeaking like sound of fingers going up and down the neck of the guitar (I think?) to hit the different chords (I think?) which kind of reminds me of all the beautiful flaws in the book itself.

TRH Updates - Summer Hiatuses

Seems I can find less and less time to post here these days with the craziness of summer, and then we go up to the cottage for the weekend, which means even less time to post. However, I think I'm going to go back to my page-a-day challenge (I have a couple of projects in mind), and that should get me going here too. Here's a list, anyway, because I have a headache and feel life can only be in short form when one has a headache:

1. I've been reading Jane Urquhart's Away and absolutely loving it.

2. TomGreen.com kept me awake and alert this week at work. I wish they had TomGreen.com radio, too, and not just TV.

3. We are obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance. My RRHB more so than me. But yesterday when they had the Alvin Ailey troupe perform, I was gobsmacked. A major American dance troupe not relegated to PBS, Bravo or TVOntario. It's amazing and I hope it continues to spotlight dance in this way for the masses. Although I'm not 100% sold on the whole "contemporary" as a format -- I think I'd love to see them all have to perform a piece of classical modern choreography, something from Merce Cunningham or Martha Graham, something that can show the masses where contemporary comes from.

4. A very good friend of our family passed away this week, and the funeral was yesterday. Up until my mother had her accident, the two of them were thick as thieves. The same, but different, neighbours but also kindred spirits. Us kids grew up together. And even though much time has passed since I'd seen anyone in the family, it doesn't mean that I am not profoundly feeling the loss. A friend said that it's maybe a little bit of me losing yet another connection to my mother. And it is that, for sure, but it's also the loss of someone who had a powerful influence upon me when I was a child. It's also knowing what her daughter is going through right now, as I said in an email, all that empty space and unfinished sentences, where your mother used to be -- it's not something you get over.

5. Headaches suck more than any other kind of everyday ache.

My Two Favourite Things