#37 - The Winter Vault

I'm a bit late finishing up my Canadian Book Challenge this year (technically I finished on July 4th, but that's entirely the wrong birthday). Anne Michaels's The Winter Vault represents the last title in my "For the Ladies" theme that I was working within. Like so many of the books that I read over the course of the year, I found the writing strong and engaging in The Winter Vault. But I also have to admit that I have mixed feelings about this novel. In a sense, I can't decide whether or not I love it or find it extremely frustrating. Maybe I'll come to a conclusion at the end of this review.

I purposefully started reading the novel on June 30th. Knowing that we had Canada Day off, and knowing that I am a fairly quick reader, I figured that I'd have no trouble finishing it by sundown on July 1st. But the novel didn't grab my attention as I thought it would, the plot didn't seem to shake itself out early enough to pull me in, and the dialogue felt more like philosophical treatise than how people actually talk. Yet, every few pages there would be a sentence that would stop me in my tracks in terms of its beauty, its innovation (word use) and its utter writerly-ness. The story feels simple at first glance: a young couple who meet accidentally find themselves in Egypt during the building of the Aswan Dam. Avery works as an engineer and Jean has accompanied him. While there, a tragedy threatens to overwhelm them both as a couple and as individuals. Back in Canada, they attempt to put their lives back together, each in different ways, and suriviving becomes more about recognizing their bond as much as what separated them in the first place.

There are so many important parts to this novel. That Michaels imagines and integrates the loss of community, of culture, of landscape in terms of the pulsating forward motion of society into the novel is commendable. That she makes the setting of the beginning of the novel so foreign (Egypt) and the people so familiar (Canadian/British "colonial" interlopers with a heart) instills a political discussion of what progress actually means. It's heartbreaking for Jean to experience the loss of the displaced Egyptians, the Nubians whose culture had remained by the river for thousands of years, as the river swells up to create the power that will charge an entire country. It's thought-provolking for Avery to participate in the moving of the giant pyramid, recognizing the irony of destroy and saving culture at the same time. These discussions that the book seems to have through its characters, through their long rambling conversations, are so typical of the genius of Canadian literature. Of our writers' ability to insure that issues are crafted as parts of a story and are separated and exposed from more than one point of view, this is something I respect very much in terms of Michaels' The Winter Vault.

However, unlike a truly brilliant book like Camilla Gibb's Sweetness in the Belly, some of the overarching socio-political discussion gets lost because it isn't integrated well enough into the characters and/or the pacing of the novel. Great, vast swaths of text are narratively separate and sit outside the experience of Avery, Jean, and then later Lucjan (a man who befriends Jean while she and Avery are separated). There's no consistency of story within the text, and while the central relationship between Avery and Jean, their marriage, their love, is what binds everyone together, it might have been even more interesting to have them actually experience the more political parts of the novel. They seem apart from the action in a way, and even though they are there in Egypt, their personal experience in a sense seems beyond the more political observations the narrator makes on their behalf.

And this brings me to my last pickle: the dialogue. I had a conversation with a co-worker last week who fought vehmently for the side that people do exist in the world who are as intense and thought-provolking as Jean, Avery and Lucjan. That they do speak in two-three page long solioquays that underscore the meaning of life and the essence of human interaction -- all the time. But I'm not sure I agree. I will forever harken back to something a teacher once told me: "dialogue must seem ordinary but not be ordinary." Anne Michaels writes conversations that feel extraordinary -- long, rambling passages that feel like philosophical dialogues more than pure discussion. They seem to lecture rather than actually converse and each character remains alarmingly introspective. Their stories come out slowly, revealing the characters over time, instead of having the dialogue move the plot forward. This is not a fast-paced novel. It's a slow read, a book that forces you to pay attention to its details, to its every word.

All in all, I think I'll continue to sit on the fence about this book for a few more weeks. The Winter Vault is a novel worth studying, worth maybe even reading it alongside In the Skin of the Lion to see how the two compare (I really felt as though Michaels was writing back to Ondaatje with this book), and worth every moment of the time it'll take to read it.

READING CHALLENGES: The final book in this year's Canadian Book Challenge! Now I just have to think about what I'm going to read this year. Bestsellers? YA? Classics? I don't know! What books are your list? Any suggestions?

WHAT'S UP NEXT: Currently reading Guillermo del Toro's utterly spooky The Strain.

TRH Movie - Public Enemies

There's always one big movie, like that one big book, that I get almost too excited about. We could make the obvious, cliched observation that I'm like a kid at Christmas -- big stars, great supporting cast, interesting story, something really worth going to see on opening day. This should be my first clue -- nothing ever lives up to the hype, and I always find myself a little defeated after closing the covers or exiting the theatre (see The Little Stranger). Today I half-made my RRHB go see Johnny Depp in Public Enemies. I mean, on the surface, it had everything that a great summer blockbuster should have, and still, after leaving the Queensway two and a half hours after we sat down, I'd have to say the best thing about the whole film was seeing the super-cute trailer for Julie and Julia.

Wait, I'm exaggerating.

But only a little.

Michael Mann seems to have fallen in love with the whole "modern" (or would we say "post-modern"?) style of film making so influenced by the Bourne series. Quick cuts, extreme close ups, hand-held camera shots, all meant to employ a frenetic sense of action on screen. Yet, I think he's so intent upon capturing the moment in fragments that he actually sort of lost the movie. There's little plot and what there is remains terribly contrived (bank robber gets caught; escapes; robs; gets caught, etc) throughout.

The film lacks the nuance of Bonnie and Clyde, the intelligence of The Usual Suspects, and especially the engaging, epic nature of a great film like The Untouchables. There's flash, there's gunfire, there's a pretty girl and a handsome man, but the most interesting aspects of the story, the evolution of the FBI, the cat and mouse chase between the agents and the criminals, all sort of get lost in the muddled cut and paste of yet another shot of someone's fingernails.

The actors don't do much because you can barely see them. And when you do, the dialogue is so stilted and awkward, and let's face it, bad, that the story doesn't seem to advance in any kind of rational way. The film's all about hard punches when it should be about the dance -- and I have to say I lost interest well before we even hit the second act. There were things that I liked, like I said, the film could not have attracted a better cast (the performances are solid); and there's just something about a gangster picture that gets your blood pumping. The excitement of knowing that eventually something's going to go terribly wrong and films are always more interesting when things go awry than when they move slowly toward a conclusion.

But capturing your attention and holding it are two different things, and Mann simply can't move beyond the style to create something substantial. Strike one for my excitement today. Now I'm just waiting for Where the Wild Things Are to let me down. It won't right? There's still hope for Max.

EDITED TO ADD: WOW, I can't believe I left this post sit for two days and didn't spell check. Ack.

My Recession Garden

My Recession Garden looks nothing like the one from the White House (thanks to @kattancock for the link). First of all, it's a lot less organized and doesn't come with a beautiful plan with lots of walking space. Instead it's a lot of messy overgrown plants beside some plants that just haven't grown well (yet). My cucumbers have started to flower, as have my cocozelle zucchinis (I had to look them up; I planted a mix of summer squash and didn't know what's what), and I have some baby beans sprouting which left me with endless joy this morning.

I spent a few minutes searching through Epicurious for recipes using summer squash because I think we might be inundated in another few weeks. So if anyone has tried and tested veggie recipes for zucchini, cocozelles or other summer growers, holler back. But so far we've eaten our own lettuce for weeks, starting off with arugula (which was delicious and has prompted RRHB on more than one occasion to say how much he loves it), then moving on to my own mix of red leaf lettuce, drunken lettuce (isn't that an awesome name) and two more that I can't remember off the top of my head. I bought more lettuce seeds yesterday to keep replanting (I already ripped out my arugula and spinach and have started second crops). And we tried our rapini but I let it grow for too long; it was inedible.

Up next are trying to save the tomato plants given to us by our neighbour -- even though they're in separate pots and are not being watered with the same frequency as the rest of the garden -- they're still developing blight. Oddly, the plants that I bought from the nursery are absolutely disease free so I'm not sure what's causing the problem.

Here's my complete growing list: cucumbers (two different kind of slicers), yellow cucumbers, nasturtiums, sage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, bush beans (three different kinds), summer squash (three or four different kinds), lettuce, rosemary, french taragon, oregano, thyme, basil, garlic, onions, carrots (just planted), radishes and some hot, spicy peppers. So far, the only "crop" that failed has been the rapini -- but in its place I planted some melons and I'm afraid they haven't even sprouted yet.

I keep saying it to many people: I am really not a fan of gardening, but I sure do love to eat my own vegetables. I also love to share. And swap. What about you other recession gardeners out there?

Also, I posted some Recession Garden photos up on Flickr.

Random Thoughts for a Monday Morning

The weather reports on the CBC keep telling me it's going to thunderstorm this afternoon but it's brilliant and sunny out right now. I believe in the sunshine even if the CBC doesn't. Of course, I'm only saying that because I don't want to get completely soaking heading home tonight. Here's a little rambling list for today:

1. Started and abandoned Dorothy Allison's Trash. Her writing is powerful, personal and honest but the content of the short stories really didn't interest me at all. As I said on Twitter this week, I really like where she writes from but not what she writes about. I did, however, find both introductions incredibly inspiring, and how her writing gave her a power she never expected to have in her life. Also, Cavedweller and Bastard Out of Carolina are two of my favourite books.

2. Am now feverishly reading The Winter Vault to be finished by the time Canada Day kicks up so I can finish my Canadian Reading Challenge. Then I'll need to decide what to read for the 09-10 challenge. All Poetry Edition? New Releases? Backlist Frenzy? Anyone else have suggestions?

3. Our garden has exploded. Soon we'll have about a half-dozen cocozelle zucchinis, beans, basil, and cucumbers (well, they're flowering so that's something). We've been eating our recession garden lettuce for about a month now and I'm about to start brown bagging my lunch every day if only because I'm working my butt off to get more of our house renovations paid down.

4. Speaking of which, I hope most of you are around late summer-early September because we'll finally have a housewarming party almost five years after moving in. Trust me, it'll be worth it. My house is gorgeous these days.

5. Feeling diseasy is intensified when I'm covered in hives from a strange allergic reaction to the sun. It only happens on my arms (well, sometimes my legs) and I've been sitting at my desk itching for the past five hours. Argh.

6. Newsweek has 50 books "for our time." I've read 5. Obviously, I'm not very timely.

7. You know what still makes me laugh? Thinking about The Hangover three weeks after seeing the film. That and my 3-year-old nephew rapping.

Short and sweet today friends. Short and sweet.

#36 - The Little Stranger

After finally (with a month-long struggle) finishing Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger, I have to admit that I'm hit or miss with her books. I adored both Fingersmith and The Night Watch. But really didn't like Tipping the Velvet. And I'm afraid I'll have to add The Little Stranger to the cons side simply because the book just failed to grab me. No, wait, let me restate that, after the first 100 pages or so, I lost interest in the book entirely.

By fate and circumstance, a bachelor rural doctor becomes inextricably involved with the fading Ayers family (Mrs. Ayers, Caroline and Roderick), owners of Hundreds Hall, a decaying house that was once the centre of society for their corner of Warwickshire. The war has just ended, leaving the country and its young men wounded, and Roderick, the eldest son, suffers. Dr. Faraday, called out to the house in place of the Ayers's regular doctor, soon finds himself an indispensible friend to the family.

With his frequent visits to Hundreds Hall, Dr. Faraday soon becomes embroiled in the myriad problems the family begins to have. First, it's a terrible accident involving a family pet, a particular favourite of Caroline's. Then, as Roderick suffers through emotional and physical difficulties, another terrible accident happens. Soon, the family, and even the servants, a young Betty and the older Mrs. Bazeley, feel as if all of the bad luck converging remains squarely the fault of the house itself.

This theme, of suspicious activity coupled with the belief that the house is haunted felt a little like The X-Files, the Ayers's Mulder to Dr. Faraday's Scully. In a fairly typical way, each occurance is dismissed by various members of the scientific community and yet life for the Ayers's doesn't seem to get any better. It's almost as if Waters was watching far too many episodes of Most Haunted during the writing of this novel. But, mainly, for me, I couldn't hang on to the main character -- I found him staid, kind of boring and a little two predictable. I'm a huge fan of Waters, as I've said above, but this novel put me right to sleep, and despite one or two truly terrifying scenes, left me without the necessary chill required from a book that's supposed to scare the pants off of you.

READING CHALLENGES: Nothing to see here.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: Summer is short: reading Dorothy Allison's Trash. And I've got to finish a Canadian book this weekend to sum up my Canadian Book Challenge.

My Plastic Life

We watched a documentary over the weekend about plastic bags. For the most part, I'd like to think I'm a responsible shopper -- I tote around a canvas bag wherever I go, we use those giant recycled plastic ones at the grocery store, and we attempt to recycle everything we possibly can. And yet, the facts from that one-hour doc were so upsetting that I've been thinking about it for days. Canadians use 6 billion plastic bags a year, and less than 1% of these are recycled or reused. The rest go into landfills. And this got me thinking about My Plastic Life, how much of the stuff I use on a daily basis and make a list to see where I can cut back and/or down:

1. Plastic bottles for shampoo, conditioner and body wash. Last year Zesty took me to Costco around this time and I bought a MASSIVE bottle of shampoo that I used for about ten straight months. Considering that's one bottle versus many smaller bottles, maybe I'll have to see if I can tag along again.

2. Plastic water bottle: this is already reusable, so I think I'm okay there.

3. Plastic wrap for all of the fruit & veggies from the grocery store, the farmer's market, and from Whole Foods. Everything I pack a lunch in is plastic, but reusable, so that's something, but still -- I haven't even gotten on my bike yet and I've already used plastic every step of the way.

4. Water bottles and plastic bags all strewn on the side of the road (when I started this post the garbage strike hadn't even begun; now it's even worse). None of these are directly my fault but I'd never really LOOKED before. Now I notice them everywhere.

5. Plastic hair clip.

6. I'm sure there's plastic in my keyboard. What else is it made out of?

7. My phone too.

8. Plastic water glasses and container (both made in China) for drinking water at work. Again, I use these everyday and have stopped buying water bottles altogether. Do I get a pat on the back for that at least?

9. Whew. Wax paper for my bagel and a brown paper bag. Both of which can go in my green bin.

10. Plastic pens.

11. Wait. My glasses are also plastic.

12. And so on...

I'm not even at 11 AM and I've already used plastic in every single inch of my daily life. Where do I start? And how do I make a change? The #1 thing I'm going to do is start taking containers to the farmer's market instead of just bringing my cloth shopping bags. But that's such a small change -- and I'm afraid it simply won't make any difference whatsoever.

Anyone else have suggestions? How do you work on cutting excess plastic out of your life?

#35 - Dune Road

I've been conflicted over the last few days about whether or not to create a post for Jane Green's latest book, Dune Road. There were two things I liked about the book -- the attempt to move beyond generic chicklit into a more mature story and it's perfection for an easy read if you're sitting on the beach for an afternoon. That said, there were a lot of problems with the book too. Continuity (or lack thereof) really makes me crazy, both in film and in fiction, and when authors repeat themselves, use the same cliches to describe multiple situations, add in unnecessary and completely irrelevant scenes, I get a little frustrated. So much about Dune Road could have been better -- that's not to say that it's bad -- but there are too many characters with too disperate storylines that don't always connect. Simply, there's just too much going on in this book and had Green slowed down and tackled maybe just one relationship instead of four or five, Dune Road would have been all the better improved by it.

But maybe I'm putting too much pressure on a book that's clearly meant to be escapist in terms of its read. The novel tells the story of divorcee (she's in her early 40s) Kit Hargrove and her family, which includes her ex-husband, two kids, a mother, and surrogate mother (her next door neighbour) as she navigates her new life. That means finding a new love (but can he be trusted?), a new job (as an assistant to a best-selling but secretive novelist with a tragic past akin to Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood), and finding her way to happiness. Accompanying her on this journey are her two best friends, Charlie and Tracy, who each have their own complex stories that further complicate both the novel and Kit's life. The book throws in multiple mysteries, then tops them off with various cliched happenstances (long-lost relatives; shady pasts; soap opera love affairs) and tosses all of this about like a salad hoping a novel appears.

Primarily what the books could haved used was a bit of editing. Please let's not use the exact same phraseology to describe more than one relationship. Please don't introduce characters with vivid backstories who have absolutely no relevance to the central storyline. Please take more care to introduce shady characters who actually appear in the novel. More action, less telling, and for goodness sake, why not make it a triology -- exploring each character: Kit, Charlie and Tracy in a full-length book so we feel at least satisfied that we, as readers, are getting the whole story.

In general, I can accept commercial fiction as it is -- fun, frivolous and frothy. That's why I whip through these books at lightning speed when I need a bit of a holiday from the tedium of everyday life. Remember, I'm nothing but a sappy girl at heart, as I've said many times in the past, but I also enjoy and am consistently impressed by writers who take up the challenge of moving beyond the cliches and the "read it all befores" to kickstart a genre that's truly in need of a little facelift. I've been consistently disappointed with my latest chicklit reads, and have honestly enjoyed some of the Harlequins I blurbed over the last year far more. They may be predictable (as was this novel), but at least they feel a little bit more honest in terms of using their formulas in new and innovative ways.

However, I don't want to end on such a negative note. I was sucked in from the very beginning of this book and read it over the course of a day. I even took the long way home via the TTC so I could get in a few more moments with the characters. There's something special in a writer who can convincingly pull you along until the end of the book -- someone who creates emotional lives for her characters in a way that you are consistently empathizing versus sympatizing, which for me, is always a richer reading experience. All in all this is a very good book for me to pass along to my adorable mother-in-law who broadly reads this kind of woman's fiction. I think she'd like it very, very much.

To Be Or Not To Be

Thoughts of BookCampTO are still funneling around my head, and one in particular -- Mitch Joel (@mitchjoel) (much quoted and oft-called upon) after stating a very obvious fact that authors should come to their online presence with a strategy and not feel they need to jump into every social media avenue available to them, said something akin to: "What does it mean if you've only got three followers on Twitter? You suck."

By definition then, little old me with my barely 130-odd followers, sucks. My teeny little book blog has never exploded or made me rich. It's never gotten me a book deal. I barely have 6 followers (I think). So overall, does my online persona suck balls in his eyes? Is audience the only thing that matters? Is my platform over even before it began? I was having a crisis of online consciousness after hearing that because deep down I've never put the words up here for anything other than the pure pleasure of typing one letter after the other.

Maybe that's short-sighted of me. Another friend at BookCamp TO mentioned that she was going to spend the good part of the upcoming year just 'getting her name out there.' And I do recognize the importance of putting yourself forth as an expert, as someone with valuable opinions to share, as someone with thoughts that are worth expressing, and I did some of that this weekend.

However, I've been hiding behind a "pen name" for years, never wanting my online life to converge with my offline life. I enjoy the bliss of anonymity. But it's been years since I published anything under "ragdoll" -- it was a holdover from the years of recapping at Television Without Pity. And then came the Boss From Hell incident where I did a lot of complaining after I lost a job I wasn't all that fond of anyway. The need not to get sued (as dooced was no longer an option) was foremost in my mind. Now my online life and offline life are so mixed up there's no easy way to keep them separate.

I was afraid of speaking up at BookCampTO simply because I like being a little behind the scenes. I like thinking what I think and sharing those opinions with like-minded individuals who love me for who I am not what I do. Anyone who was there knows that I got over that rather quickly and couldn't quite help myself but to open my mouth and let some thoughts spew forth. So maybe I need a bit of a retool, a bit of a rethink, maybe I need a 2.0 or a 3.0 version of myself that's not afraid to step from one side of the internets to the other worried that people will find out that I type more often than I think.

But then, Sassymonkey's intelligent and thoughtful post "Can't we just stop with "right" and "wrong"" also got me thinking yesterday that maybe Mitch Joel, as smartypants as he is, perhaps spoke a bit too quickly -- that there's nothing wrong with having three followers if you're happy and pleased with your online life. That if you enjoy using the technology and its ability to add value to your life, that's all that matters. Not all of us are here to find a way to do much more than say what might be on our minds. Even if it is behind a cloak of a poorly conceived moniker that came out of hearing a truly awful Aerosmith song that was stuck in one's head for far longer than it should have been.

So, I don't think I'll take the "ragdoll" off the site any time soon. I mean, truly, all I want to do here is talk about good books. And I think that's probably okay, right?

#34 - Love Begins in Winter

From the P.S. Section of Simon Van Booy's collection of short stories, Love Begins in Winter, I learned he's a solitary writer. Not that writing isn't always a solitary act, but that he actively heads out of town and travels alone specifically so he can conceptualize a story before he puts it down on paper. His writing embodies the nature of this travel -- it's touched with the insights of a keen observer but not without a haunting sense of loneliness, one that informs every character that comes alive throughout the five stories.

Each has its basis in a love story, whether it's traditional or parental, love in its various forms remains the central theme of each piece. Entire lives are defined by it, or the absence of it, and as his characters come to find it, unexpectedly in most cases, love changes them in not-so subtle ways. Setting informs every inch of this book -- it's rich in its description, from the rain on the streets of Sweden to the snow in Quebec, you get the feeling that the author, and not just the characters, have walked the streets, lain in the cold white sheets of the hotels, and explored every inch of what's detailed.

Poets have such a way with prose. I know we take that forgranted, that poets actually know what to do with language, but sometimes they stumble over the longer form (I'm sorry Anne Michaels, I am sorry to say that outloud; I know you are beloved), and get lost in trying to find the right words. And yes, what Van Booy does with language is breathtaking. I'm forever impressed by writers who can create a vivid character, a vivacious situation, with just one sentence, and this book was full of moments that made me hand the book over to my RRHB and say, "see, THIS is how I feel."

I'm a romantic at heart. I wept at the sickly-sweet ending of the utterly terrible He's Just Not That Into You. I stumble over cliches of chicklit, and often find myself welling up even though I know I've read it all before. But here, in Love Begins in Winter, I've never come across love in quite this way before -- never stretched it out like a road underneath a motorcycle or jumped with it off a cliff as a backstory, and it's refreshing to see how it changes Van Booy's characters when it appears in front of them whether they're expecting it or not. Walter the Irish-Romany's knees get a little weak but pages later you see how true love vests itself into his life. George gets a letter in the mail and it changes his life forever, and for the better. And if you're patient, and read this book slowly, carefully, you can't help but get swept away in the romance of it all, at least I couldn't.

READING CHALLENGES: The "Summer is Short. Read a Story." challenge for work. Next up is actually trying to finish Sarah Waters' latest novel, and hoping that it doesn't continue to put me to sleep at the turn of every single page. Zzzzzzzz. Wait? What?

NOT FOR A WHOLE POST, BUT STILL: Speaking of romantics, I finished Gemma Townley's latest novel, A Wild Affair (#35) and have to admit that I wasn't as enamoured as I usually am with her books. The plot seemed really contrived and her usual way of writing smart situations within a genre that really exploits cliches just wasn't there. On the whole, I'm not sure if the Jessica Wild character is someone to hang a series of novels upon, and the "twist" felt more like a plot necessity than a life-shattering event. However, I still adore her, and highly recommend her chicklit as a cut above many of the other writers attempting the same kind of fiction.

BookCamp TO

Giving up a hard-earned Saturday isn't always easy, and I'm so glad that the experience of BookCamp TO made it worthwhile. Billed as an unconference, Book Camp TO brought together a wide variety of bookish folks, some from the big publishers like me, some from smaller publishers, some writers, some marketers, the list goes goes on, for a day of discussion around the future of book publishing. In a way, I think it would be worthwhile for us to move past the idea that the future is coming and just accept the fact that the future is here. It's not something we need to bemoan or begrudge, but look at and decide what we want to do in terms of what's right for any particular author or business.

The biggest takeaway for me from the day would be a point that @janinelaporte made early in the day: "content is content and it doesn't matter how you get it, just that you get it." I'm in a unique position, having come up through the ranks of online vs. general publishing, accepting the fact that content is malleable has never been an issue for me. The fact that people can read in so many different ways isn't a threat, it's an opportunity, and ensuring that we figure out the right way for everyone to get paid, the possibilities are limitless. We spend too much time as an industry (forgive me, but it's true) whining about the death of traditional publishing.

Again, maybe it's just my sunny personality (not, yawn) but I'm really tired of all the complaining. Book sales are up in Canada. Anyone who takes the TTC knows that there are at least 7-10 people in each car with an open book on their laps (I am usually the only one with a Sony Reader). Mobile devices and downloadable reading applications are the fastest growing segment in that industry. Sure, we don't have a Kindle yet, but even the hint of a story that Indigo intends to create their own device has me all atwitter. Never before in the history of the bricks and mortar business has such innovation made such evolution possible. We just need to get over the mindset that we're in the book industry and not in the business of creating content.

That doesn't mean that all of our authors are commodities, nor does it mean that books as they have existed will cease to exist, but simply that we need to explore the opportunities of doing things differently. Why can't we celebrate this fact? Why are we always focusing on what we're doing wrong and what we've lost (who actually misses that Globe stand-alone Books section please raise your hand?) instead of imagining all of the great stuff that's going to happen once we make that simple shift in conception? Authors are important. Books are important. None of that is going to change by the nature of how one gets their content, whether it's a mobile phone or a magazine. Whether they're listening to it via an iPod or whether they've cracked the spine on a freshly bought tome from Book City. I want it all to survive. In fact, I've staked my family's livelihood on that fact that it will -- or else what am I even doing in the business in the first place?

I had so many interesting conversations on Saturday that trying to dispel them into one singular blog post might not be helpful, but for me, the best part of the day was hanging out with smart, interesting, intelligent people who all feel passionately about the survival of books in general. And if anything, I learned that my unique position: as an author, as a blogger, as a person who works at a publishing company, has knowledge that's actually worth sharing. Funny thing, that.

Summer is Short. Read a Story. (#s 32-33)

I am very excited about a fun campaign we're running at work called "Summer is Short. Read a Story." Celebrating much-beloved but hard-to-sell short story collections for the summer months got me thinking about two books I finished recently: Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge and Gil Adamson's Help Me, Jacques Cousteau. Both books contain a series of linked short stories that have female protagonists: the former centred around an aging (and then retired) 7th grade teacher (the Olive Kitteridge of the book's title) and the latter around the ever-growing Hazel. Authors Adamson and Stout (who just won the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge), while different in terms of their style and substance of their stories, have uncanny talents for characterization. They can sum up a character -- their habits, their emotions, their intentions -- often with just one heartbreaking sentence that seems to epitomize good writing. It's something I admired while reading both books over the past week.

Olive Kitteridge lives in a small-town in Maine, her husband was a pharmacist and her son grows up to be a podatrist, and neither truly lives up to her expectations. People in town are as kind to Olive as they are critical, and she's a presence in every single story, whether it's from the point of view of her husband or her neighbour. Each perspective adds a little bit more to her character, unravelling Olive like an onion until the final sentences of the book open her up to the core.

Echoes of small-town life can be found in Gil Adamson's stories as well, Hazel, who we see grow up from a young girl into a young woman, copes with the pressures of family life. Whether it's crazy uncles, oddish grandparents, fathers who can't stop tinkering or mothers who feel that they made a wrong turn somewhere, she grows up with a wild and unwieldy cast of characters who inevitably shape who she is as a person.

My reaction to both of these books was emotional -- I fell a little bit in love with these two main characters, Hazel for her rough and tumble time with adolescence and the pains that accompany growing up, and Olive for her tough-talking, no-nonsense approach to life that ultimately ends up alienating her from so many people that she loves. Modern life bleeds so many different colours, from rationalizing long-term relationships, their success or failure, from expectations we have for ourselves and how they change to the complex relationships between parents and children, and these two works explore these themes with a keen and affecting eye for detail and determination.

Highly recommended reads.

READING CHALLENGES: Help Me, Jacques Cousteau is the 12th title I've read for the latest Canadian Book Challenge. And, well, Olive Kitteridge is an award winner so maybe I'll create a new challenge for those, unless on already exists?

WHAT'S UP NEXT: I've started Denis Johnson's Nobody Move, Frances Itani's Leaning, Leaning Over Water and am halfway through Sarah Waters's latest novel, The Little Stranger. But Vanity Fair also beckons -- somehow I can't resist spoiled rich kids in Sofia Coppolla-inspired photo joints coupled with the Kennedys and more Bernie Madoff revelations. I mean, I'm only human people.

#31 - Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

When I first started to work at Random House, I spent a lot of time getting to know the lists. It's not something that happens organically until you've worked at a publishing house for a while, and so I spent a lot of time combing through blogs getting to know the books. One of the first authors that I discovered was Alexander McCall Smith, and I started to read the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, quite simply because Sarah W had said so many nice things about the series that my curiosity was piqued. But the books are so short and easy to read, which meant that I devoured about six of them before feeling like I'd eaten too much candy: a little upset in the stomach but still somewhat high on the sugar.

Then, the TV show came along and I was worried, at first, that they wouldn't be able to capture the spirit and essence of the books. They did. Completely. Which meant that this weekend as the show came to a close, I was left without my weekly dose of Mma Romotswe. Well, that just won't do, so I picked up McCall Smith's latest book, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built. And it's just as sweet as the six or so other books I've read. The central mystery revolves around Mma Ramotswe discovering the reasons why a local football (read: soccer) club keeps losing matches, fixing up Mma Makutst's love life (oh Phuti!), and figuring out what strange noises the little white van is making and why. The themes that are present in each of the other novels are present: a strong moral sense, defining people by how they are treated and treat one another instead of their social and/or monetary status, simple solutions to complex problems. What's also present is Mma Ramotswe's particular talent of coming to conclusions that are both full of common sense and sassy smartness that you wish you had a No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency to figure out your life.

If I have one (slight) criticism, it's that all of the books are essentially the same: local mystery, personal problem (either Mmas) that needs sorting, and larger life lesson. Yet, this is the very sameness I craved this week while feeling terribly unwell. Familiar characters, familiar situations. The experience of reading these books is akin to watching every episode of ER or Law & Order. And I know a lot of the repitition is for the people picking up the series halfway through...so really, it's not a true critique of the novels themselves.

The book was delightful, I mean, of course it was -- it was just what I needed this week and my only complaint was that I read it too fast. Yesterday as I was waiting for the very late TTC, I finished this book, read the P.S. section of Bonjour Tristesse, and bemoaned the fact that all of my electronic reading gadgets had run out of juice. There's nothing worse than being a reader caught with no words to feast her eyes upon.

READING CHALLENGES: AMS was born in Zimbabwe. And he's actually the first African novelist I've read in ages for my Around the World in 52 Books challenge.

NOT WORTHY OF A FULL POST NOTE: I also read #32 this week -- Pillow Talk by UK chicklit author Freya North. The story was sweet, and I'm not going to lie, there were places where I actually teared up, even if I did get a little embarrassed by a couple throbbing members along the way.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge.

#30 - Bonjour Tristesse

Francoise Sagan published Bonjour Tristesse when she was just eighteen years old. Precocious, intelligent and hideously spoiled, the novel's heroine, Cecile, leaves Paris to spend the summer on the coast of the Mediterranean with her father and his mistress, Elsa. As Cecile describes, "The first few days were dazzling." Romance floats by on a boat carrying a young man named Cyril, and the two begin a love affair. Her days are carefree until her father, a bit of a playboy who has never settled down, invites a friend, Anne, to come and stay with them as well. 

Anne and Elsa are as different as two women can be, and what starts off innocently soon morphs into a love triangle that Cecile manipulates from her position as daughter, lover and friend. Spoiled and used to getting her own way, Cecile isn't happy with a very specific turn of events so she does everything within her adolescent power to impose her will upon the adults. Her childish actions have very grown up consequences, and not a single person on that dazzling vacation walks away unscathed. 

The novel is short, succinct, and the narrative style reminded me a little of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Cecile's own short fallings are endearing, and the entire book makes you long for those days when you were foolish enough to act upon your feelings every single moment of every single day. The P.S. section in my copy contained an interview with the author as well as a truly captivating essay about driving -- just perfect for the start of summer when all I can think about is taking a road trip and spending hours in the car just driving, not really caring if I get anywhere in particular. 

READING CHALLENGES: Sagan was born in France, so that takes care of that country for Around the World in 52 Books. Reading her novel made me long for Paris, because it was just about a year ago that I was there with Sam. Also, Bonjour Tristesse is on the 1001 Books list, so that's two challenges with one short page count (130!).

#29 - Brooklyn

Weeks have passed since I finished reading Colm Toibin's ridiculously fabulous new novel, Brooklyn. When the book arrived in the mail, I let it sit on my desk for a couple of days because I knew it was one of those books that once I started reading, I wouldn't be able to put it down. Both of Toibin's previous books were equally excellent but Brooklyn is hands down my favourite. In fact, I'm going to say that it's probably the best book I've read so far this year. 

Eilis has spent her entire life in the village of Enniscorthy where she spends her days taking bookkeeping classes and her nights being ignored by local boys at local dances. She lives in the shadow of her successful, poised, well-dressed older sister Rose, who has built an existence for herself in the small town with a good job and a passion for golf. When a priest from Brooklyn comes to visit and offers Eilis the chance at a new life -- a job, a place to stay, a world away from Enniscorthy -- and she takes it. After all, both of her brothers have left to make their fortunes in England, and Rose does nothing but encourage her to take the chance. 

In Brooklyn, Eilis finds herself, she works hard as a shop girl during the day, and continues to learn bookkeeping at night. Simple goals, but all within reach. And her life truly opens up when she meets Tony. Her homesickness has passed, and despite the moral strictness of 1950s America (not to mention Ireland), Eilis actually feels happy until tragedy brings her home. Everything is different now. Eilis is different, changed, more confident, schooled, and experienced, which leads her to a crossroads. Does she stay in Enniscorthy or does she return to Brooklyn, to Tony?

The story reads overtly simplistic when you think about it -- a coming of age tale, an immigrant's experience -- but Toibin's skill at telling it remains unwavering throughout. His language, his ability to cast the characters, to explore their emotional situation without ever having them openly express an emotion stunned me. What more can you ask of a book than it be a well told story with well developed characters who make a choice that ultimately defines their life in the end? How many young girls emigrated, found themselves away from home, unhappy, and then surprisingly ensconced in a new life that widens their world? 

Eilis doesn't always make the right decisions. Her human flaws are always apparent. Yet, her story has you engaged from the very moment the novel opens with the simple action of her watching Rose come home from work. If anyone out there has read and hasn't fallen completely in love with this novel as I have, I will swear right now that we can never be friends. 

READING CHALLENGES: I'm counting Toibin as my Irish entry for Around the World in 52 Books. It's also #1 so far in terms of the 30-odd books I've read so far this year...

Stunned And Stumped

We're still missing our desktop. Luckily, a darling old friend has fixed it for us, but we forgot the power cord, which means we're still on the laptop. That's not a bad thing. But it's strange to be so without what you're used to. Freelance is piling up. Blog posts are piling up. Life is piling up. Today my electronic gadgets all died on the way home as I had just finished my book -- that meant I had nothing to read while waiting and waiting and waiting for a Tamil-stopped streetcar. 

This morning, I woke up at 4:36 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. Good for the garden, because it meant I had time to head outside before getting the morning routine started, and water the plants with the rain barrel versus the hose. Bad for actually being awake. The day started and ended off in a haze... and now I'm sucked into the last episode of America's Next Top Model. 

#28 - Under the Skin

The closest book I can compare Michel Faber's truly creepy, utterly addictive novel Under the Skin to would be Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I've been classifying it as speculative fiction, a book that takes place in a world that looks very much like our own, but slowly reveals itself to be very, very different. Isserley spends her days hunched behind the wheel of a slowly-breaking down vehicle trolling for hitchhikers along the A9 highway in Scotland. Her world is skewed, not only from the giant glasses she wears, but also because of her strange occupation. Little spears in the seat of the car sedate the hitchers once she's determined whether or not they'll be missed, and their bodies transported back to a farm where others of her race wait to process the "vodsels."

Slowly over the course of the narrative you learn that Isserley, although she refers to herself as a human being, is quite different from the rest of us who define ourselves by that term. Her body mutilated so she can appear as close to normal in the "vodsel" world atop the earth, she's in constant pain and her job takes its toll. I don't want to give away too much of the plot because Faber's ability to unwind the story over the course of the novel remains its strength. The further along you get, the further you realize how troubled Isserley is -- both physically and psychologically.

The only other book by Faber that I've read is The Crimson Petal and the White, which, to this day, remains one of the most frustrating reads I've ever suffered through. The book sprawled all over the place, tumbled along for almost 1,000 pages (or at least it felt that way), and never came to a satisfying conclusion. The exact opposite is true of Under the Skin. The narrative is crisp and almost cinematic, you feel your own legs cramp as Isserley spends yet another day behind the wheel trolling for her victims. You shake your head as they get in the car. You feel even worse after the book finally reveals exactly what happens to them once they decend into the depths of the world underneath the farm.

To say this book wasn't what I was expecting would be an understatement. And it's it just wonderful when that happens?

READING CHALLENGES: Under the Skin is on the 1001 Books list, so it'll count towards that challenge, and Michel Faber was born in The Hague, The Netherlands, so that's one for Around the World in 52 Books too.

TRH Update: A List

How do weeks go by and have I zero time to update this space? Not having a computer complicates things because it means that I can't sit down after dinner and write a quick post, and squeezing anything other than work into day to day life seems almost impossible. Here's where I am lately:

1. Saw the kidney doctor lat week and he said two things: one, I have excellent blood pressure and considering I have barely exercised in the last six months, that was a relief; two, because there's so much extra protein in my pee (gross, I know), I might have to take more medicine to stop it from mowing through my organs and causing even more damage.

2. One should never get organized for one's taxes in January. One will lose half of the things one is supposed to bring with her to the accountant and then forget the rest. What does this mean? Going through all the receipts again to see what's missing.

3. Our house is coming along swimmingly. My RRHB has built a deck off the back where a gross, disgusting, rotting mudroom used to be and I am spending every spare moment outside. Last Saturday I got up early (he was working out of the house) and spent every minute from about 8 AM until 1 PM in the garden and on the deck. Fresh air truly revitalizes.

4. Pigeon by Karen Solie is one of the best books of poetry I've read in ages. Her poems inspire a sense of wanderlust that I forced us to indulge in when we made a day trip to Point Pelee two weekends ago. Pictures are here. This would be book #26 for the year. I'm sorry the review is so short. But just know it's the perfect book to read in the spring and her observations about how the modern world interacts with nature made my heart skip a beat.

5. I've also finished reading Paulo Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die (#27). The tale of a young girl who tries to kill herself only to discover that life can be redeemed at any moment was...okay. Certainly not my favourite of all of Coelho's books that I've read, but I enjoyed thinking about how Buffy would play the lead in the film and how they'd adapt it for the big screen. The love story is sweet and he writes about mental illness with an alarming accuracy -- it's no One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but more of an exploration of how creative minds are sometimes forced into difficult situations when the normal limits of society cannot bind them. Maybe the idea of redemption was a little too obvious throughout the book for my tastes. But it's apparently Coelho's most autobiographical book, and the P.S. section at the back of my copy was fascinating to read in term of his own experiences with mental hospitals and the barbaric treatments he himself suffered. Also, this book is on the 1001 Books list, so I can add on to that challenge, which is good. I'm so far behind in my reading it's actually shocking.

6. I'm halfway through Francine Prose's amazing biography about Anne Frank. It's coming out next fall so more on that later. As well, I finished what might be my favourite novel I've read so far this year, Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, but I want to write a proper post about it, so, again, more to come on that title too.

7. The week before I saw the kidney doctor, I also saw my family doctor about a world of issues. Mainly the fact that I haven't felt like myself in months, the grumps have taken over, and maybe the prednisone crazies have stuck around in ways that they haven't in over 10 years. That's been part of my radio silence too -- who wants to read about my sadness over and over again? There are far better things to do. Right now I'm just figuring my way out. See #8.

8. The garden. Wow, who would have ever thought that I would become a gardener. But there's something magical about planting seeds and watching them sprout. Last year I tackled vegetables and this year I planted some flowers (none of which have started to grow beyond seedlings yet). I like to plant things with a purpose so a lot of them are either edible or have beneficial properties for birds, bugs and butterflies. More pictures to come. But what I do know is that taking a half-hour, an hour, fifteen minutes and spending it outside after a long day has made all the difference.

9. All of the meds have combined to make me more tired than I ever thought possible. The more I push through the exhaustion, the better I seem to feel, but I'm also irritable, grumpy, short-tempered and so fuzzy-headed that I can barely put a to-do list together. Anyone have any suggestions?

10. I've been obsessively using Purell these days. Not just because of the Swine Flu hysteria but more because I've picked up every single little bug that's gone around. There were about six weekends in a row where I was either running a fever, barfing (that was a pleasant one), coughing, more coughing, wheezing and/or feeling stuffy-headed from various viruses.

11. Marley and Me is quite possibly the most boring film I've ever watched. Next to The Watchmen, where I fell asleep, in the theatre, right before the sex scene. Wow, that was a shocker to open up your eyes too. Also, Jennifer Aniston is orange. Throughout the entire picture.

Okay that it's it -- /babbling.

Disaster!

Our computer is down for the count -- hence the radio silence. Fingers crossed it gets fixed soon because I have a half-dozen book reviews to post!

TRH Movie - 17 Again

(Please forgive me. I am typing on my BB because our computer is down. I'll fix spelling and grammar tomorrow!)

Yes, it's formulaic. Yes, I am about 15 (okay, maybe 20) years older than the target demograpic. Yes, it stars Zac Efron. But I was totally charmed by 17 Again.

The film, which sends Mike O'Donnell back to high school after he finds himself alienated by his kids and on the verge of divorce, had me laughing out loud more than I care to admit. The story -- a little bit Back to the Future crossed with a little bit of 13 Going on 30 -- is about redemption and second chances. It's heartwarming and kind, and simple. These days I seem to crave simple, innocent stories, maybe because they're so refeshingly honest and unpretentious. Who knows.

Matthew Perry (whose hair, so like Jason Priestly's (sp), has remained unchanged since I was in high school) plays Mike the Elder; Zac Efron plays Mike aka Mark before and after the school custodian casts the magic spell that sends him back. The usual teenage problems plague Mark, which, of course, lends itself to the comedy. The sweet centre of the story remains how Mike/Mark changes to save the life that he was almost about to lose.

Zac Efron surprised me. And I'll watch Matthew Perry in everything. Leslie Mann was great as Scarlet, Mike's high school sweetheart and almost ex-wife. Annnywaay, it's been ages since I'd been to the movies to see something fun and frivolous, and I'll take the teasing for seeing 17 Again. I'm a big girl.

#21 - The Omnivore's Dilemma (Also #s 22, 23, 24 & 25)

Somehow, I feel like starting off this post being hyper-critical of myself: I should really be blogging more. I should keep writing even though I don't feel like it. I should do a lot of things. I know that Michael Pollan isn't purely being self aware with The Omnivore's Dilemma, but the introspective elements mixed in with his philosophical discussion of 'a natural history in four meals' definitely makes you think. The book hums along like any good documentary should -- it's rich in investigative journalism, full of interesting points of view about the current state of the food industry, and never fails to try and observe a situation from every angle possible.

Broken into three sections (although subtitled 'four' meals), Industrial, Pastoral and Personal, The Omnivore's Dilemma unearths many real and even some invented debate (his whole rationale for eating meat in the third section I found a little hard to stomach) behind how food is brought to the table. The first section of the book, where Pollan discusses and takes apart the industrial food chain, straight from a fast-food meal eaten in the car to the fact that by-products of corn are in just about every processed item in a grocery store, was utterly captivating. One part Fast Food Nation, another part 100-Mile Diet (which I haven't read all of yet), the sheer force by which farms have become industrialized combined with the unknown and ever-reaching ramifications made me hunger even more for the weather to heat up so I could get seeds in the ground for vegetables.

I also found Pastoral, where Pollan visits and works on a farm that lets animals be animals by having developed a very real, yet still domesticated (is that the right word?) ecosystem that not only feeds the people who live there, but also supplies many restaurants and customers in the area with fresh meat and vegetables, compelling. Never doubting the value of farmers, especially ones practicing organic and more ethical ways of reaping value from the land, The Omnivore's Dilemma points out dramatic differences between industrial farms and smaller, independent outfits.

The third section, as I mentioned above, lagged for me -- probably because, while notable, the idea of hunting and gathering my own food (that which I have not cultivated in my backyard), honestly has me stumped. I couldn't imagine heading out into the woods with a rifle and shooting a wild pig. Yet, I can understand why Pollan felt it necessary, especially with the level of scholarship around which he answers the question: "What should we have for dinner?" Also, I really hate mushrooms. Perhaps this isn't something I should hold against the book.

All in all, I spent much of Easter weekend reading this book. I had to pause for a moment because we had our Fall 2009 sales conference (for which I read two of the best fiction titles I've read in a long, long time: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann and The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter, #s 22 & 23; and one truly fantastic YA novel called The Amanda Project, #24) and there was much reading to be done (and shared), but managed to get right back into it once we were through last Friday. There is no way that I will ever think of corn in the same way again. There is no way I'll think of tofu in the same way again. There is no way, in fact, that I'll think of dinner in the same way again, if I'm being honest. And isn't that a most powerful thing for a book to do -- take a mundane and utterly human aspect of one's life and turn it inside out.

Annnywaay. Over the past few weeks, I've been under the weather, mentally, physically, but I've managed to keep the garden going (loads of flower seedlings coming up; everything that needed to be planted before the last frost is in), and keep my head above the metaphorical water enough to still read. Writing, however, still remains a challenge.

Oh, and #25? I finished up Marjorie Harris's delightful Ecological Gardening and learned many, many good tips. Not the least of which was a) that I shouldn't be watering at night (oops!), b) that I should really figure out a way to compost and c) that companion planting (nasturtiums here I come!) is really my friend.

READING CHALLENGES: I'm adding The Omnivore's Dilemma (which is actually the only book I've completed) to The Better You Read, The Better You Get Challenge. One down, nine to go. It's going to be a long year of self-improvement, I think.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: I'm halfway through Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die (Buffy is playing the lead in the film adaptation; I'm excited to see what she does with it, although I'm finding it hard to imagine how they crafted dialogue out of the author's heady narrative).

#20 - Truth and Beauty

Already a fan of Ann Patchett, I knew I would probably enjoy her memoir, Truth and Beauty. When my friend Emma at work told me, no, insisted that I read it, I ordered up a copy and started it on the ride home from work last Friday. Um, I finished the book at about 10 AM on Saturday. Patchett, who befriends a gregarious, infamous girl from her college, Lucy Grealy, while both attend the infamous Iowa Writer's Workshop, writes about their "epic" (as the front cover blurbs) relationship.

Lucy Grealy, whose memoir, An Autobiography of a Face, propelled her to literary stardom before she succumbed to the lasting tragedy of a childhood illness, which resulted in thirty-eight surgeries, a lifetime of pain (literal and psychological), and a terrible drug addiction. People were simply attracted to Lucy -- they all knew who she was, and she gathered up friends and acquaintances, and filled up her world with them. Even though a rare form of Ewing's sarcoma left her face permanently altered, Lucy pushed on through life, scars showing inwardly and outwardly. While tragic, the point of the book, from my perspective anyway, was to truly exhalt the idea of friendship, how in some cases it simply pulls someone into your life forever.

While both writers struggle to start their careers at the beginning of the book, Truth and Beauty also narrates their successes. For Patchett, it came upon the publication of her fourth novel, Bel Canto; for Grealy's, it arrived suddenly with her memoir (and not from her poetry, per se). The two women support each other, derive inspiration from one another, and work extremely hard for many of the same goals (fellowships, etc.).

The most affecting part of the book for me, obviously, was Lucy's struggle with illness (I haven't read her book, by the way). There was a point in the memoir when Ann Patchett described how Lucy felt toward people suffering from disease with no outward symptoms, how unfair and/or angry (and I'm paraphrasing) this made her. In a way, I could relate -- the Wegener's has scarred my face (acne from the meds), bloats my features (prednisone), lost me a hip, and caused up and down weight gain (as has, um, age and inactivity!). But in another way, I could see what she was saying as well, that to walk around with a very physical reminder of how a disease had effectively ruined your face is quite different from dealing with some pimples and a few pounds.

Yet, I can't help thinking it was a little unfair (and perhaps I'm taking it a little too personally) to judge the amount of someone's suffering simply by outward scars of their disease. The Wegener's attacks my insides, makes me exhausted, puts me in fear for my organs, has ruined my lungs, and all kinds of other internal things that can't be seen. And I live with it every day. It's amazing, at times, to think that your body has the power to kill you when every ounce of your flesh has evolved to survive. There's a psychological struggle with disease that's there regardless of whether one has scars on the inside or out -- I suppose that's where I kind of determined there was a selfish streak to Patchett's dear friend.

Annnywaaay. Truth and Beauty is well worth the read. It's a good book to buy for your best friend just to send along to say, "I love you this much." To say, "if you had lost everything I would send you kitchen appliances and JCrew t-shirts too." To say, "this book says it so much better than I ever could."

#19 - Somewhere Towards the End

Diana Athill's inspiring memoir about old age was like a balm these past few days. Tears, anger, emotional eruption, and the fine realization that the prednisone crazies have probably conquered all my good thoughts (despite almost being off the drug), all combined to leave me feeling quite exhausted. Luckily, then, I had this slight memoir to keep me occupied. Athill, who worked in publishing until she retired at age 75 (I don't know how she did it), has written brilliant little book in Somewhere Towards the End.

Narratively, the memoir has echoes of Jean Rhys (who was a friend), Joan Didion, and a touch of Isak Dinesen, and it's sharp, unwavering voice remains focussed and clearly meditative throughout. The book opens with a number of clearly practical observations about age, moves through more traditional memoir-type content (the life and death of her sex life; the important men in her life), and then passes quickly over the idea of regret. Independent and fiercely individual, Athill's words are nothing but inspiring. There are sentences, paragraphs, entire sections to be marked as one reads, which gives one pause to examine one's own life. To imagine the spec of dust one's own ninety-odd years will have left on humanity as a whole.

The parts that I liked best were about death and dying -- the business of it, as such, and how lucky Athill has been in all of her years not to experience too much of it. The idea of luck persists throughout the book and it's not as if Athill is bragging, her stoic, almost upright British self would never stand for such, no, she's simply stating a fact. To have lived her life as she has done meant that she was both incredibly lucky and incredibly hard working. Some advice: avoid television, read a lot, take up gardening, never worry if your life falls somewhat outside of the norm, and experience life moment by moment if you can, taking pleasure out of what brings you happiness.

Now, my fingers are sore to the bone, and my arms and legs ache from lugging pounds of soil, so I am going to sign off by saying prestigious awards or not (the memoir won the Costa Biography Award in 2008), I adored every single inch of this little gem of a book.

Word Power

I am about to head out into the garden to start giving our soil a lift. I've been reading Diana Athill's excellent memoir, Somewhere Towards the End, all morning and wanted to share this:

Getting one's hands into the earth, spreading roots, making a plant comfortable -- it is a totally absorbing occupation, like painting or writing, so that you become what you are doing and are given a wonderful release from consciousness of self.

Considering I haven't felt much like myself lately, maybe some time outside will give my mind a chance to make its way back. Last night, as I was lying on the couch watching television for the 100th day in a row, I decided I've lost my self-confidence. But I suppose that's what trauma does, takes away the delicate balance between putting yourself out into the world and keeping yourself tied up tight, safe. My mother died in September. And it wasn't an easy death. Like Athill says, she's been spared the difficulty of death among her family members, quite a feat considering she's in her 90s now. I envy her. But mainly I'm thankful for this wonderful little book she's written that seems to be helping me today.

I've started a year-long countdown to what I think I might call The Year of Living Royalty. We'll see how it goes.

Coming Up For Air

Life in general has conspired to keep me away from writing these past few weeks. I've spent so much time at a keyboard, both at work and then doing freelance, that working for myself was a chore I just couldn't add to the list. In fact, all I've been doing is writing lists that I never seem to finish, items that never seem to get crossed off, organizational tricks that never seem to actually work. So, of course, it's no surprise that I've ended up with a terrible cough just as spring decides to poke itself up out of my garden in the form of tulips.

We've been couch hunting. It's taken weeks. But at last we ordered both the main stage and a love seat on Saturday morning. I think we've been to every single furniture store in the GTA over the past few weeks. The good news is that the deed is finally done and even though we're incurring costs to have our own fabric put on the couch, at least it's what we want. The house is looking so wonderful that it's hard to believe that it's ours -- and it'll seem like a dream come true when we're actually living downstairs and enjoying all of my RRHB's hard work over the last few years.

Annnywaay. I can't seem to finish anything these days. Not a book. Not a project (have you been within earshot of me complaining?). Not a single damn thing. The foggy-headed disease blues are hovering and just knowing that I'll soon be off the prednisone isn't enough to keep me going. Hard work, hard graft, seems all I'm capable of -- and it's a little disappointing to realize that people all around you don't actually see you for who you are. Someone described me as a "work horse" the other day, and I don't know why it caught me in the wrong way. I've always been a hard worker but right now I just don't see the point. I'm not enjoying anything at the moment. My heart's not in it -- maybe that's why the to do list seems never ending. I just don't have the get up and go to actually get up and get it done.

Annywaaay redux. Today I spent some time in the garden. My RRHB laughed when he saw me hauling the bags of composte from the garage. He said, "There's no way you're going to be able to move that dirt." But the sun had worked its magic over the past few days. The top soil was flexible and I did manage to get one part of the vegetable garden turned. Layers of newspaper, more seeds planted (some spinach; we'll see how it does), and five bags of dirt, compost and clay reducer later, I think we might just have something. Now if I could only convince my neighbour NOT to do our front gardening. Last week he severed my enter lavendar plant simply becuause he didn't know what it was -- didn't know that it's meant to overwinter and not be trimmed back to its bare, bare roots. This is the third lavendar plant he's destroyed. We keep telling him. He keeps laughing. As you can tell, there's a language barrier.

What a metaphor for my life at the moment, huh?

#18 - The Good Wife

Relentlessly addictive, that's how I would describe Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife. The manuscript sat on my reader for months. Every time I found myself on page one, I quickly switched back to whatever classic I was currently tackling because I knew if I started I wouldn't want to stop. I wanted to wait until I had an afternoon of free time (right, phftt) and be able to read the book. Of course, I happened upon an extra long subway ride (what the TTC being delayed and having problems? Yawn.) Of course, I had forgotten my book. Of course, I was uninspired by the two classics I'm currently reading (Dracula; Tess of the D'Ubervilles). S0 I started A Reliable Wife. And. Couldn't. Stop. Reading.

The novel opens with an older man, described by himself as somewhat past his youth, but rich, so very, very rich. After the deaths of his wife and daughter, and the loss of his errant (and possibly bastard [as in not his]) son, Ralph Truitt stands on the cusp of the new century having written away for a wife. The woman who replied, the beautiful, dishonest, Catherine Land replied, reinventing herself along the way. A tragic accident on the way to the farmhouse puts them both in a precarious situation: Truitt close to death; Catherine entirely dependent upon his kindness once she nurses him back to health. They marry. And an odd, not entirely unromantic relationship develops out of their mutual need. He's rich; she's poor. He wants his son back; she's got a life that needs atonement, and an ulterior motive. As the rest of the novel unravels, these desires push them in different directions, and both Catherine and Pruitt are changed as a result of their union in ways they might not expect. The result is delicious for the reader.

The novel, while a little predictable (I had figured out one of the twists fairly early on), is utterly addictive. It's also terribly sexy -- full of sensual description and rich in terms of the description of physical affection. No one escapes sex in this novel and it makes people act in ways they might not expect. In some cases, sex turns into love, and love is sometimes mistaken for lust -- regardless, the book never shies away from the utterly human ways in which the act defines relationships. Goolrick has full, descriptive prose that sometimes feels a little over the top at times, yet it never overpowers the story. Quite the opposite, it pulls you into the characters even further, allows to to invest in them emotionally, which makes the drama of the last third even more interesting. All in all, I couldn't get enough of this novel.

#17 - The Believers

Before my head almost exploded from far too many rewrites of my latest Classic Start, I finished Zoë Heller's excellent The Believers. Familiar in tone and even basic story to Mark Haddon's similarly good A Spot of Bother, the novel begins with patriarch and left-wing lawyer Joel Litvinoff having a stroke in court. Rushed to the hospital, Audrey, Joel's cranky, opinionated and almost unlikeable wife, joins her children in the vigil by his bedside. Heller uses the traumatic situation to explore the family dynamics between Joel and Audrey, their daughters Karla (married to Mike) and Rosa, and their son Lenny. Each suffering from their own particular brand of unhappiness, the novel pulls the family apart like stringy cheese before she melts them all back again for the final scenes.

Despite the fairly Ann Patchett-like twist that I felt was kind of unnecessary (and that I won't spoil here), I can't think of a book I enjoyed so thoroughly in the last few months. Family drama lends itself nicely to Heller's voice and characterization. And she never shies away from conflict or uncomfortable situations in her novels, the kind of Sunday afternoon family dinners that can be so painful yet necessary are dissected with her clinical eye for weakness and exploited for their dramatic values throughout this novel.

Of the interwoven stories, I enjoyed Karla's the most -- a social worker dedicated to helping others and pleasing her union-boss husband (he wants to have kids; they're trying; then perhaps adopting) -- she begins an awkward, unlikely affair with the owner of the newspaper stand in the hospital where she works. The love affair with Khaled proves a catalyst for Karla to change her life and her evolution was the most satisfying. Not that Audrey's acerbic, sharp-tongued personality wasn't engaging, but it wasn't until the novel explored how she came to love her troubled (drug addicted) son Lenny that she truly felt human to me. The opening parts of the book did a little to set up that side of her, but it was Heller's unwavering honesty about Audrey's maternal limitations that finally brought her into full colour. Rosa and Lenny (the former exploring religion; the latter tumbling back into his heroin habit) also had their time in the narrative sun but, by the end, I just felt Karla's story was the most satisfying.

Annnywaay, small criticism for a book that does just what a literary novel should: create characters that challenge their environment, that evolve throughout the pages, that highlight the particular human problems that modern, Western families face today. A deep-seeded unhappiness guards their every move, despite their apparent affection for both each other (even if that's hard to get at) and for their dying father. He's larger than life, and they're all just trying to escape from his high-afternoon shadow. And regardless of their particular beliefs, whether personal, political, religious or simply philosophical, not a single member of the Litvinoff family survives unscathed from Joel's illness, and nor they should.

#16 - Life Sentences

I have a literary crush on Laura Lippman. Last year around this time, I interviewed her for Another Thing to Fall, the latest novel in her Tess Monaghan series. She answered my questions patiently and honestly (via email), which made me crush even harder. Two weekends ago, mired in the fog of disease and a decided lack of energy, I cuddled into bed with her latest novel, Life Sentences. Her latest stand-alone novel, like What the Dead Know, is also based on a real Baltimore criminal case. In this novel, Lippman mixes it up a bit, however, with her characters -- the main one, Cassandra Fallows, is a writer. And not even a crime writer.

With two successful memoirs behind her, Cassandra's third book, a novel, isn't doing so well. A lonely night on her latest book tour turns up a kernel of an idea: she'll write from truth once again, this time exploring the lives of her childhood friends. One in particular, a woman named Calliope Jenkins who spent seven years in jail for killing her child (but who never admitted the truth to anyone). A platform to explore issues of race, priviledge, memory and friendship, the novel exquisitely circles around itself, mixing in sections of Cassandra's successful books with points of view from other characters, until it reveals the truth.

There are so many reasons why I liked this book -- the insider's perspective on the publishing industry, the fast-paced nature of the narrative, and the rich characterization of both Cassandra and the supporting players. Lippman writes women well without falling into the typical stereotypes that sometimes plague lesser crime/commercial writers. She elevates them, regardless of their damaged state, into real people, and never passes judgement on their habits (alcohol for some; sex for another) and/or motivation unless it's to empower someone by the end of the story. Overall, there's not much else to say except that it's a pretty darn good read.

TRH The Weekend Edition

It seems that the only time I have for writing these days comes during the weekend. I've been working non-stop on my latest Classic Starts manuscript both Saturday and Sunday (of last weekend) and yesterday we spent the day out and about looking at furniture. We are moments away from having the main floor finished (with the exception of the kitchen). The trouble now comes with finding furniture. Every little step (deciding on a wallpaper for the downstairs bathroom, talking about the style of couch that we like) gets us that little bit closer to the goal. But we were both sure tired by the time we got home. I've finished two books (The Believer and Life Sentences), watched a really great movie that I'd love to blog about more fully (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and wish that I didn't have work to do so I could get to the more fun stuff. Alas, here I go, back to abridging.