#3 - Her Fearful Symmetry

Let me start off with a confession, as so many of my book reviews do (which leads me to ask one simple question: does anyone actually care about what I confess?), I hated The Time Traveler's Wife. I found Niffenegger's book to be slightly absurd, overwritten, and ridiculously implausible. In a way, I guess you could say I wasn't a fan of supernatural romance.

With that in mind, I have no idea why I wanted to read Her Fearful Symmetry in the first place. I mean, the book got terrible reviews, and even the somewhat kind piece by Emma Donoghue in the Globe hits upon the novel's central flaw: that too much symmetry makes a bit of a mess of a book. Yet, I was utterly intrigued. And, last night I stayed up way, way passed my bedtime to finish it. In fact, I turned off the light, closed my eyes, tossed and turned for a bit, thought about the book, got up, turned the light BACK ON, and then read the last 150 pages. What kind of a book does that?

The story opens as Elspeth Noblin dies from cancer. Her ravaged body is held by her lover of many years, Robert, and it's sad. A tad cliched, terribly overwritten, but sad nonetheless (all of the things that annoyed me about the first book). But I was so engrossed by the sheer force of Niffenegger's story that I almost missed my bus. And buses in Toronto are loud. And I was standing rightnext to the stop.

Elspeth leaves the bulk of her estate to her nieces, the daughters of her twin sister Edie, with whom she hasn't spoken in over 20 years. It's not a straightforward kind of will, for what kind of novel would include such boring, plot-sucking details as that, and Elspeth demands: a) that the twins, Julia and Valentina (ugh, that name, ugh) must live in her flat for one year and b) their parents, Edie and Jack, are never to set foot in the apartment.

The girls, who are mirror twins, are looking for an adventure. Julia, aggressive, demanding, controlling, pretty much makes decisions on behalf of Valentina. And Valentina, desperate to get away and have her own life, simply can't figure out how to break the bond. These problems are somewhat cyclical, something akin to what their mother and Elspeth must have gone through when they were young.

Once in London, and this won't spoil the story too much, they're literally and metaphorically haunted by Elspeth. She's a force in the novel: both as a character who left behind gaping holes after her death (for her lover Robert, for her family) and as a paranormal spirit who simply can't move beyond the confines of the very apartment she willed to the girls. Lots of creepy stuff happens. Lots of silly stuff happens too.

The setting of the novel aptly reflects the atmosphere Niffenegger tries to create -- the apartment building, which contains Robert, Elspeth and Martin's homes collectively (Martin is an older gentleman whose wife, Marijke, has just left him because he refuses treatment for his highly advanced case of OCD) sits right beside Highgate Cemetary. And Robert, an historian who's finishing his PhD thesis, works as a graveyard tour guide. Their lives swirl and intersect around one another, relationships develop, both romantic and friendly, and it's this part of the book that I enjoyed the most -- the "up and move to London" portions.

However beyond the fascinatingly banal everyday life sections, Her Fearful Symmetry moves into the absurd. The sections where the implausible happens were the hardest for me to get through. What I honestly loved about this book were the parts with OCD Martin. As a girl who knows and understands what those compulsions are like, I found his character, his struggles, incredibly moving and effective. I was less convinced by the last third of the novel, and wholly disappointed in the book's main twist. Yet, as I said above, I stayed up way, way beyond my usual bedtime just so I could find out what happened. It's a rare writer who can capture your attention like that and not let it go.

Was this book worthy of Niffenegger's massive advance? Probably not. It's terribly overwritten and full of needless details. Is it worthy of being on the bestseller lists? I'd hesitate, and then say yes, if only so the publisher can recoup their advance, but also temper my negativity by giving the book an overall thumbs up for being a truly enjoyable commercial read.

#2 - Eating Animals

In preparation for our Vegan Smackdown 2010 (here's our very first video podcast), I read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals this past weekend. I've been a "selective omnivore" and a "passive vegetarian" for the majority of my life. Despite turning vegetarian when I was about twelve (in a shocking moment of tween tempestuous in response to my mother serving me a piece of almost-rare roast beef), I've always eaten fish (albeit with no regularity), and started eating chicken (from Rowe Farms or the Healthy Butcher) about a year ago.

At first, it was about the animals -- we grew up listening to "Meat is Murder" and were very into Morrisey. Then, when I was diagnosed with the disease and learned that too much protein was terribly hard on your kidneys, that sort of clenched it for me. The environmental concerns came last -- for, like Safran Foer, I still had idyllic images of farmers in mind when I thought of chickens, cows and pigs. Fast Food Nation opened my eyes a little. The Omnivore's Dilemma was also good. But Safran Foer's book has had me thinking and mulling over my eating choices for days.

Sure, he's making a point. Sure, he wants people to become vegetarians, that much is obvious. But even though I realize I'm being pursuaded by an incredibly convincing narrative, there are truths about this book that are unavoidable. We, as a society, do not think, properly debate with ourselves, about where things come from. We consume. We package. We shop. We eat. We sleep. We get up and do it all over again. And as so much of our lives has been managed for us by giant companies whose only responsibility seems to be to their shareholders, it seems impossible to try to step outside and make a difference.

Factory farming, as its described in the book, is abhorrent. The socio-economic, environmental and philosophical implications of being so separate from that which sustains us can't but have an irrevocable impact on human society. That's not to mention the impossible suffering that the animals who give their lives to ensure we get up, walk around, go to work, entertain ourselves and keep us healthy endure. Yes, I like to think I buy responsible meat (from a local butcher who sources from local farms when at the cottage; from The Heathy Butcher or Rowe's in the city), I still can't get my head around the fact that industry is ruining the sheer sustainability of our lives, of my nephew's life.

The fact that we are destroying the ocean at record-breaking pace to keep shrimp on the table and frozen in aisles of the grocery store makes me furious. The fact that hundreds of thousands of species are decimated by fishing techniques makes me want to row entire populations out to the middle of the ocean so they can see what soon won't be there. Imagine not seeing the whales in Tofino? Imagine sea horses being a thing of encyclopedias? I can't. I don't want to. Words matter. Calling senseless killing "by-product" doesn't erase the fact that for every piece of fish on the table, hundreds needlessly litter the oceans because of impatient and irresponsible companies looking to make a profit. Is there sustainable fish to eat? I think I'm going to turn to Taras Grescoe's Bottomfeeder for the answer. But, until then, I will not eat another piece of fish.

After our two-week Vegan Smackdown comes to a close, I'll probably still continue to selectively eat what little chicken I do eat -- but I'll never buy it in a grocery store. I'll never not take the time to make a separate trip to Rowe's or the Healthy Butcher. And, it's not like I do this anyway, but I certainly won't be eating any chicken I absolutely don't know the providence of.

I thought I was doing well by gardening. After all, growing my own food has given me a solid understanding of how much hard work goes in to keeping a garden that will actually feed me and my husband for most of the summer. It's not easy. It's worth celebrating every time a pull fresh green beans and steam them up for dinner. But knowing that the butter my RRHB smothers them with was made using factory farmed milk would turn their taste sour in my mouth. How can I avoid butter for the rest of my life? Is buying organic butter enough? Is it enough to do that small thing?

I don't have any answers to the numerous questions the book brought to the forefront. It a persuasive, thoughtful, artful (if repetative in places) work that had me hunkered down when I should have been cleaning the house in preparation for my brother's birthday. Here's the thing -- I'm an easy one to convince. I was already headed in the right direction. Here's hoping that Jonathan Safran Foer finds an audience for his book outside of people like me, and his book can make a difference.

READING CHALLENGES: I'm continuing all of my 2009 challenges because I didn't finish a single one. Here's a book for The Better You Read, The Better You Get theme I set up last year.

#1 - Dracula

For the majority of my life, I've associated with Dracula (the character) with scary things I'd rather not imagine thank you very much. "I vant to suck your blood" refrains and the truly awful Francis Ford Coppola movie that I remember seeing in the theatre did nothing to help the cause. Bram Stoker's (pictured left) book was mentally filed, "never going to read."

And then.

#1. The Undeath Match happened.

#2. 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die happened.

#3. The Strand happened (and I fell a little in love with the TP edition I found sitting a top a pile of totally unrelated books).

#4. "My RRHB read the book in one sitting and wouldn't stop talking about it" happened.

Which meant I simply couldn't ignore it any longer.

And rightly so. It's an excellent novel. Echoes of one of my all-time favourite books, Frankenstein, are found within the epistolary format; the novel contains a truly kick-ass female heroine (why was that never portrayed in any film who actually stands up and fights both for her life and for her friends [in a totally appropriate 19th century way, of course] in a way a certain, modern character [ahem, starts with a "B" and ends with a "hella" er "ella"] never does); and there are some really fun, creepy scenes of Dracula making his way to England (the boat, ahhh, the boat) that actually made me shudder and I flipped the pages. Put all of it together and I'm kind of shocked to say that I'm really glad I finally finished Dracula.

If I have but one criticism of Stoker's work, it would have to be the bits of the book told in colloquial dialogue. I found Van Helsing's sections hard to understand and the way he spoke to be kind of silly and affected (not his character; that's exactly the opposite of this). But I got over this quickly as the book's action and pacing ripped me along on another part of the adventure. The story's so rich, so layered and so utterly engaging that my own preconceptions about affected speech/dialogue in novels can be set aside.

Also, it's pretty neat to see the literary evolution of the vampire from the sort-of beginning. I'm sure there were earlier moments in terms of the vampire appearing in literature, but I like thinking about all the moments in pop culture that has sprung from this particular text. Annywaaay, I just loved it.

READING CHALLENGES: 1001, baby.

WHAT'S UP NEXT: Reading The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt, Clean by Alejandro Junger, the first Sookie Stackhouse book and Sometimes a Great Notion. Yes, we'll see which one I actually finish first. Your guess is as good as mine.

TRH Movie - (500) Days of Summer

There's not a single stitch of doubt in my mind that I'm a sentimental girl. I have a few movies that I watch over and over again when I get that girlish need for imagined romance. Tully, Before Sunset, Say Anything -- you know, those kind of films. The ones that get under your skin more and more after each repeated viewing. The ones you never get tired of, that you find kind of inspiring regardless of the odd cliche thrown in here and there. Well, (500) Days of Summer has just been added to the aforementioned list.

Summer's a person, not a season, and the (500) (while I'm not entirely sure what the point of the parenthesis might be other than the fact that the film obviously doesn't show ALL 500 days) refers to the length of time spent in a relationship. Tom meets Summer at work. She's out of his league. She's quirky, wears great clothes and can sing a mean karaoke. They become involved. Words are uttered. Time's spent. Things wind up. Maybe they unravel in interesting ways. But at the end of it, you're enamored by them -- they're dangerously quirky and fundamentally flawed, qualities I much admire in films of the romantic, ahem, nature.

But what I truly admired about (500) Days of Summer was the film's storytelling. It moves back and forth like memory, discombobulated and out of sync, through their relationship. Starts at the end, works its way to the beginning, winds past the middle, perks up for a day or two at either end, and yet, you never get lost. You're happy to be thrown in to the places that feel important (or not); to observe the differences a month can make; to wander into the sprawl that defines these two 20-somethings.

It's a whimsical film, and if you can stand a little whimsy with your love story, then I'd say you'll enjoy this picture as much as I did. You'll revel a little bit in how they listen to The Smiths (maybe a bit too much), how they dispense of some indie cliches but not others (oh wise baby sister sage, yawn), and hold your heart in all the right places at more than one crucial, ideally filmed moment. It's delicious. And I've already ordered a copy, getting myself all ready for the summer when I can have a mini-festival of all these films in a row. Perfect for a hot summer day at the cottage after you've spent a few hours in sun, written a bunch of great pages, and are looking for that one sweet escape with a mint julep and some jelly beans at the ready.

New Year's Revolutions 2010

I'm a bit late with my New Year's Revolutions for 2010. Usually, I write them the day before the year actually starts so I can step directly onto the right foot before the countdown begins.

To review: New Year's Revolutions 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009

Where I feel I ended up depends on how we look at the year that just passed. There's a line in a Raconteurs song that I adore that goes, "It's been a wasted, worried year." And that's kind of how I feel about 2009 in general. I spent a lot of it upset, irritated, frustrated, ill and almost dead. But despite the negatives, I managed to tackle quite a few of the things on my list for last year: I kept the weight off (saved in the regard by the almost-dead episode this summer); have been exercising regularly (swimming, among other things); have lived a less cluttered life; brought my lunch A LOT; kept the budget in check (and this with massive renovations going on); bought less (with some huge exceptions); and have desperately tried to use what I have (again, with some exceptions).

Not bad, I'd say, for a wasted, worried year.

But my big question is where to go next. What to put on the list for this year? What have I learned and where did these revolutions get me?

1. I am hopelessly addicted to television and movies
Every year I put 'watch less television' on the list. Every year I manage NOT to accomplish this goal. It needs drastic measures, like cutting off the cable or throwing out the television. Neither are rational responses. Limiting myself to certain shows has helped. Giving up time wasters has helped too, but the structure of my modern life, and the state of my health, makes it far too easy to spend far too many hours baked out watching bad television. And I try to dress it up all the time by saying that time spent watching a movie isn't wasted time. It's artful. It's cultural. It's important. The 10 Revolution: Try to watch less. But don't beat yourself up if it doesn't happen. Give up the crap. And go to bed earlier to read.

2. I am hopelessly addicted to being miserable at the big "W"
One night, after a particularly rotten, awful week, my RRHB and I were talking about how we aren't the kind of people who find it easy to just go out and "do a job" and come home. You know those "people": happy to not be defined by the job, content to get your paycheque and carry on, excited by the prospect of stability and nonplussed about the politics, etc. Wouldn't life just be easier if we were one of those magical, happy people. Being "Zen" didn't cut it. In fact, I'd say that I'm far less content now than I was even a year ago. The 10 Revolution: Make small changes to my outlook so I can make good decisions about where I want to go next and what it is I'd like to be doing. Be more positive. Take things less personally. Plan for better options. Take more deep breaths. The answer isn't for me to become a better person; it's for me to accept the kind of person I already am, right?

3. Cleanse. Be Strong. Cleanse Again. Breath. And Stretch.
Despite the really shitty health year I've had (starting it off on prednisone; ending up down one organ), I'm actually healthier than I've been in ages. Restorative yoga, a good, healthy diet, regular exercise, calmer disease -- these are all goals I've had for the last five years. I finally feel like I've gotten somewhere. It's an interesting feeling, that's for sure. The 10 Revolution: Keep at it. Cleanse more often. Cleanse properly. Keep swimming. Keep sweating. Keep up with the yoga. It's all going in the right direction.

4. Take a really, really long, relaxing vacation or two.
With no blackberry, Twitter, Facebook, email, computer, television or anything other than good company and a few good books. The 10 Revolution: Turn off the digital life more often so I can enjoy the real life, but perhaps blog a bit more consistently.

5. Be kinder to the people I love.
This one is self-explanatory. The 10 Revolution: Remember that the choices I've made are always the right ones and act like I believe this. Maybe a little of this includes being kinder to myself -- but that sounds cheesy.

There you have it. These are my lofty aspirations for 2010. Trust me when I say I have concrete goals too -- but these are tucked safely away in another list, written in pencil in a place where I'll be able to consult them frequently.

TRH Movie - Up in the Air

Time started to be on my side yesterday afternoon. We finished up all of our massive holiday celebrations, paused for a moment together to enjoy our anniversary, and then went our separate ways. I had a couple of things to do at work, and my RRHB went off to do some recording with a friend, which meant I had a free afternoon. What! How could that happen? By the time I got home last night, I hadn't just hit the proverbial wall, I had ran headlong into it with all the power of an 18-wheeler. However, before that and just after managing to jump in the pool for a bit of swimming, I treated myself to Up in the Air.

George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a high flying (literally) corporate consultant called in to "manage" the termination of large groups of people during restructuring or firms going out of business. Like any industry, even one based on the massive economic problems ransacking the United States, Bingham comes face to face with change. In his instance, the rolling bag, hotel-living lifestyle that goes along with being on the road 330 days of the year comes to a crashing halt the moment a young inky pup upstart presents the idea that the company needs to go "Glocal." They need to take their "global" and make it "local."

They're bringing termination in-house and doing it via Skype. Bingham's essentially grounded. But before they clip his wings, he argues that Natalie Keener (no irony in her name there, yawn [played by Anna Kendricks]), should come with him to see how impossible virtual firings truly are -- real human beings in awful situations faced with a computer screen telling them their life is effectively stopped short seems painfully inhumane to me. And having been through it myself, I tend to agree. If I had walked into the evil corpration and found myself face to face with a talking head Skyped in version of HR, I probably would have lost it even more so than I did during the actual termination interview.

Of course, conclusions are made, lives are changed -- because the purpose of the film is to find Ryan Bingham at the crossroads, but like (500) Days of Summer, (which might just be one of my favourite movies of the year) the results aren't what you'd normally expect, and that's where you find the true magic in the movie. That's the thing about indie movies. They take cliched moments, essential rom-com stuff, and turn them slightly in another direction, making them seem more real in a way that, say, The Ugly Truth, just can't.

And, there are lots of these moments in Up in the Air: the meet cute (Bingham and his love interest, fellow high flyer Alex [played to perfection by Vera Farmiga], meet in an airport bar and bond over Air Miles, bonus points and hotel room service); the wedding shinanigans (Bingham's sister's nuptuials); the not-so honest confessions of "real lives" and "real intentions" (Ryan + Alex may or may not have a happy ending); and the aforementions upstart inky pup gets some worldly experience that changes her course (if we've all seen In Good Company we know how this turns out).

But I was surprised by a lot of the film too, especially by the cameos, the name actors who drop in for moments when you least expect them, and all of the quasi-documentary-like sections of the film when Ryan and Natalie are at work busy firing people. This film couldn't have been made even five years ago. It wouldn't have had the same resonance in terms of the economic situation. It's real life that makes this movie poignant, and not the other way around, which isn't normally the way that movies work on an emotional level.

There's something unsustaining about the lives we've created. Maybe this is the message from the film. That all of the modern advances that have brought us to the brink of collapse can do as Ryan suggests, send a message to take you in another direction. That having a goal that's tangible on a human rather than a socio-economic level isn't necessarily a weakness but a sign of a different kind of strength. There's poetry in that, I think. Also, I'm thinking that it's probably never a good idea for me to go see these kinds of movies by myself. It's always good to have company to stop the philosophical stuff from just roaming around in my head until I feel a little batty.

Lastly, just like Michael Clayton, another film I absolutely loved, George Clooney proves time and time again that he can play one hell of a modern leading man. Oh, and on the way home, I managed to sit in a subway car littered with ads for Ryerson University's continuing ed programs. Shaky photo attached. Interesting coincidence, I'd say.

#68 - The Law of Dreams

In a way, I think I've been waiting for The Law of Dreams. It's that kind of book that fills up a void: the missing space after I finished reading Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, another sweeping epic of a book that changed me when I closed the cover. These are stories that stay with you. These are the books meant to be read. These are the ones that you add to life lists.

The Law of Dreams won the GG in 2006, rightfully. It's a story about the Irish Famine, but like Let the Great World Spin, the event itself serves as a backdrop, as an impetus, for the novel's protagonist, Fergus, to step out into the world. He doesn't really have any choice. The famine has devastated his way of life -- tenant farmers on a large estate, a roaming father comes home the minute the potatoes turn up black, refuses to leave, and months later, families all across Ireland are destitute, starving, and forced out into the world to not only find a fortune, but to survive.

Once Fergus leaves as his house burns, he joins a rag-tag group of children who beg, steal, and even much worse until one tragic event forces him to leave this second family behind. This pattern continues for the poor boy. He travels, works for a bit, finds a subtle sense of stability until the moment when an act of unprecedented violence forces him in yet another direction. He works the rails for a time to earn enough money for passage to Canada. He barely survives the passage. He manages to set foot on Canadian soil but that doesn't mean Fergus remains headed for a happy ending. These pedestrian, modern concerns, a quest for happiness in a world where the basics of life are taken for granted, well, that's just not what's on his mind.

Behrens writes, "Sometimes your heart cracks and tells you what to do." Throughout this entire story, Fergus follows his heart, often to his detriment, all the way to Grosse Île, where one utterly heartbreaking moment changes his course yet once again. It's Homeric, this odyssey, and this young man grows up in a way that the traditional sense of a buldingsroman can't encompass. There's no artifice to this story but that's not to say Behrens use of language and form isn't beautiful, it is, but it's not hiding anything either. There's a plainness to his observations that cuts right to the essence of human nature, of suffering, and of the need to consistently make decisions under excruciatingly hard circumstances.

Epic yet understated, rough yet delicate, honest yet heart wrenching, The Law of Dreams was one of the best books I've read in a long, long time. Highly, highly recommended.

READING CHALLENGES: I'm not at all sure where I am in this year's Canadian Book Challenge. I'm going to try to figure that out by the end of the year. But this book fits the bill and I'm counting it, hoping that it'll inspire others to pick it up.

Feeling A Little More Like Myself

This weekend has flown by. We've finally got chairs for our dining room, a bookshelf for the living room, and a menu for our three days of holiday entertaining. All the shopping (for our families) is done and I've got a new pair of winter boots that don't leak. It was non-stop yesterday and that compounded with a terrible night's sleep means I'm a little groggy today as I finish up editing my latest Classic Start.

We went to see The Constantines on Friday night for their 10th anniversary show. We had a grand old time. I did a lot of yelling and shouting. And dancing. And singing along. There was a moment where I thought it would be a fantastically fun idea to dive into the mosh pit as if I were in my early 20s again. A moment of teasing and an insistence on crowd surfing happened, and I changed my mind. On the first week of January, it'll have been five years since I was let go from Alliance Atlantis, and listening to the Cons made me think of that time again. I listened non-stop to Shine a Light record the summer before they "reorganized" me out of a job. I played it loud and obnoxiously at work when I was there late, frustrated by the lack of support I received, frustrated by the bad management, leaving work tired, angry and upset most days. It was no way to live. But I'm a sensitive girl, and the whole experience left its mark. It's funny -- there's an element of karma to the fact that the woman who made all of our lives so miserable was herself out of a job a couple of years later and I've certainly moved on to a better place.

Perspective isn't really something that can be taught. It's like a simple shift in point of view in a narrative -- you know that it'll tell the story better but you're so wrapped up in the writing you can't separate yourself from it. I'm a goal setter but that doesn't necessarily make me a goal getter. I'm not big at risks. I've always been afraid to take a leap without having something holding me up. For the most part, that's my RRHB. He has the most reassuring shoulders. I can always find him in the crowd.

And so I've been contemplating what's next. This year has been so difficult, the one year anniversary of losing my mother, the appendix nightmare, the lack of a proper vacation -- it's all taken its toll. I'm finding myself rushed and irritable, frustrated by the lack of momentum in my life, but always recognizing that every inch equals a decision. Perhaps I should have entered the mosh pit -- age and tragic hip be damned. But I had just as much fun from the sidelines surrounded by friends, and remembering that even if I'm lonely most days, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me. I should be brave enough for it not to matter. I should know what's really important.

#67 - Little Black Book of Stories

Have you ever noticed I generally start all of my reviews with some long, rambling introduction? Today will be no different.

I'm reading about 4 different books right now (What Should I Do With My Life, The Law of Dreams, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life; can you sense a theme there?), including the only one I've finished so far, A.S. Byatt's engaging short story collection, Little Black Book of Stories. Monday was spent in transit (doctor's app't, to and fro from work), which ensured I had a few spare moments to read (and by spare I mean an entire hour in the middle of the day waiting for the damn doctor).

We were at a birthday party this summer when the sister of a friend of mine was telling me the book that she had most enjoyed reading so far in 2009 was A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book. As I don't have a copy that book in my possession, when I found this book just sitting on my shelf, I thought, "yes, that's it for this week." Because if you can't have THE book why not at least try A book by one of the year's most celebrated writers?

Comprised of five lengthy short stories, Byatt's expansive imagination coupled with her never-ending quest to aptly describe human saddness (or longing, that might even be a better word), the book reminded me a little of Too Much Happiness. Every single character in the stories has been marred emotionally by their lives -- happiness isn't expected and nor is it gained. Life is rough, untidy, difficult and downright miserable in places. But because Byatt's an exceptional writer, the undercurrents running through each story, the little bits of lives that exude joy, are there as well. She also has some lovely fantastical elements in each -- the stories themselves tend a little toward fairy tales for adults.

My favourite of the five would have to be "Body Art": an aging doctor released from an unhappy marriage but not his religious convictions finds himself entangled with a young (apparently almost-homeless) artist charged with "brightening" up the ward. Universal questions like how and why is art important to a life are, of course, raised, but the unlikely relationship between the two resonates even more. The central tale, "A Stone Woman," has lovely fantastic elements, and "The Pink Ribbon" too -- even if that story is achingly sad (it too reminded me of Munro, specifically, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain").

On the whole, this collection was far more satisfying to read than Nocturnes. Because, holy cow, what a snoozer of a book that was.

READING CHALLENGES: Cleaning Out My Closet -- a book from the dark corners of my bookshelf, for once. And because this book just feels so British (along with A.S. Byatt being born in England), I'm tagging it for Around the World in 52 Books too. My only reading challenge for next year? To keep up with all of my other reading challenges. Or maybe even finish one or two.

The Sunday Papers, TRH TV & Jersey Shore

We slept in this morning, and I've decided that today will not be a complete waste, as was yesterday. The work week was exceptionally long, with sales conference and a general sense of wariness on my part, and so we went out on Friday night with friends for much-needed release. Of course, in my semi-non-drinking state, the three pints that I had rendered me utterly useless almost all day yesterday. And so I watched Jersey Shore online after Zesty sent a funny note about it last week. Good grief. It's hard not to judge these people. And I suppose that's the point -- the strange obsession that we have with "reality" television seems to be ruining entertainment, as Vanity Fair pointed out in its December issue -- as we spend hours (as I did) following the lives of vapid, self-involved, idiotic wastes of earthly space from a fairly protected sense of being morally better than they are.

As everyone starts to follow the Copenhagen conference (the Globe had extensive coverage of global warming in this weekend's Focus section), a huge discrepancy between where pop culture seems to be headed and the real issues facing our society today. In short, I kind of feel like the environment just doesn't matter to the masses. I'm sure I'm making ridiculous generalizations, and shouldn't just use the vapid, ridiculous "characters" from Jersey Shore as my test subjects, but I was honestly disgusted by their lack of awareness, the amount of garbage they produced on screen (all those disposable cups!), and the kinds of things that caused an emotional reaction (feeling "outcasted" and fighting in bars). The men use bucketfuls of product on their hair and the girls who claim they're "all natural" (in that they aren't augmented) while piling on ridiculous amounts of make-up and wearing next to nothing.

Maybe I'm just trying to attach a sense of righteousness where it doesn't belong. The stereotypical muscle-bound meat heads and the girls who love them seem to be partying their way into a z-level fame. These kids can't aspire to much or else they wouldn't be on the show in the first place and I often wonder if these shows aren't meant to depress the viewership as much as appeal to it. How can you not feel defeated about the state of feminism when you watch young girls come up into a house of strangers, allow themselves to be filmed jumping half-naked into a jacuzzi, and pull off their underwear while the three other women in the house call them "skanks" and "whores." In the same breath, two of the four women in the house then go on to cheat on their significant others while being so drunk they can't remember what happened, one girl gets "sloppy" (which none of the men appreciate?) on the first night, and the last girl, nicknamed "Sweetheart" leads one roommate on only to make-out minutes later with another fellow from the house. Where's the dividing line between skank and whore? The determination lies solely with whomever shouts the loudest?

I shouldn't have watched it. The comedic value of it all was lost on me. Or maybe I'm just too serious these days. Feeling a little lost and neglected in terms of my own life and far too hungover yesterday to contemplate anything more intellectual. But when and how did society fall so far and how do you think these kids are going to feel about themselves when they gain some perspective? Some of them are simply old enough to know better -- a man on the cusp of his 30s who is still chasing tail and judging his success in life by how many women are entrapped by his abs should be ashamed of himself. The idea of instant gratification is taken to the nth degrees by this snippet of American life. These kids don't really want to work (their room and board is paid for by working a shift or two a couple of times a week in a t-shirt shop), their values are family-orientated in a way (they're mainly Italian-American) when it suits them, there's no discussion of safe sex, common decency seems non-existent, and sexism on both counts gets confused with sexual attraction in ways that make me feel far, far older than my years.

And the whole time I'm watched, mindful of being entirely the wrong demographic, I kept thinking: we're wasting the earth's precious resources on this sh*t. And no one seems to care. I wonder how ironic Pauly D's Cadillac tattoos will be in however many years when there's no more gas and there's nothing left to power their beloved cars. Do you think he'll even understand the irony?

Three Books To End November (#s 64,65 & 66)

This cold has lingered, and actually rendered me quite useless yesterday, which meant I did a lot of reading (and watching of movies). I finished Mo Hayder's latest Walking Man novel, Skin (it's excellent), Anne Giardini's enjoyable Advice for Italian Boys, and Twilight (note the lack of adjective).

#64 - Skin
Mo Hayder's writing scares the living bejeezus out of me. She writes excellent mysteries that keep you guessing to the very end. This book picks up right where Ritual ends, picking up the threads of the story just a couple days after Flea Marley and Jack Caffrey solve the muti case they were working on. There's a serial killer in this book who will send shivers up and down your spine, and the twists and turns that the book takes will no doubt have you shouting, "No!" as much as I did. Mo Hayder's writing's as addictive as her stories are -- once I started this book, I didn't put it down until I was finished. There's a lovely image of Flea in the middle of the book feeling as if the sky is pressing down on her -- squeezing all of the air out of her lungs -- and the passage was just so perfect, so indicative of Hayder's simple prose powers, that even if the book had stopped there I would have been satisfied.

#65- Advice for Italian Boys
Full disclosure -- I interviewed Anne Giardini for work the other day and had managed to read half the book before sitting down to talk to her (it was a REALLY busy week). Let's keep in mind that Ms. Giardini's a CEO of a giant company in her day job as I tell this story.

1. I forgot the battery to my recorder. And had to race back to my desk to get them.

2. Then I put said battery in upside down and had to fight with it to get the little thingy back open to switch it over.

3. I turned it on and set it down in front of her and started the interview. But I didn't press RECORD. So we had to start the whole interview over again after I realized that I wouldn't have a single note because I was relying on the audio... Sigh.

Regardless, she's lovely, and talks how she writes -- in long, luxurious sentences. The novel loosely follows the almost coming of age of Nicolo, a twenty-something Italian-Canadian man whose trying to find his way in the world. He still lives at home, works at the gym, and hasn't quite had a significant relationship with the opposite sex. The middle child (in between two Enzos), Nicolo has a very special relationship to his advice-spilling Nonna, whose sayings pepper the story and the text with old-world common sense. Giardini said that she wanted to write a book about a good man, a man who isn't without conflict, but one who at his core has a moral centre that's just right. She accomplishes this, and it's a breezy, delightful novel that presents the picture of a lovely family that you'd be happy sitting down and sharing a meal with -- and damn, I'd bet the food would be fantastic.

#66 - Twilight
I finished it. And that's all I'm going to say. More to come via our Undeath Match next week.

TRH Movie - The Road

We had saved up our entertainment budget and put our Air Miles to good use (movie passes) so my RRHB said, "why don't we go to the movies." At first, he wanted to go see 2012, and then he actually read the reviews. Looking up showtimes, I noticed that The Road was screening at the Queensway, so I suggested we see that instead -- it took a little convincing. It's honestly one of our favourite books -- and that doesn't happen often. We have drastically different taste in reading material.

This film has so many things working in its favour: excellent source material, Viggo Mortensen, a score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and a director, John Hillcoat, who has a bit of a track record (he directed The Proposition). All the pieces are there, but the film doesn't quite reach its potential. It's too long, and the liberties that they take to adapt it to the screen didn't quite work for me.

Let's pause for a moment because by no means is this a bad film. Quite the opposite, actually, it's a very good film. I just wanted it to be a great film (and so did A.O. Scott).

So, let's start with the positives -- Viggo Mortensen plays the Man, the narrator, the father who takes his only child on the road after the apocolypse, consistently heading south because it means survival. He's excellent: nuanced when necessary, protective, angry, solid, and worthy of the role. The young fellow (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who plays the son was good too -- and the pair, worked significantly well together. There's a lovely balance to the film, don't get me wrong, the story is heartbreaking, between the son who only knows this ravished world and the father who still remembers aspects of what it was like before the cold. The two of them work this contradiction exceptionally well.

For the most part, it's a faithful adaptation of the novel. But there are Hollywood elements that I wasn't sure the story needed: the history of the man's relationship to the boy's mother (played by Charlize Theron), a strange trip back to his childhood home (did I miss that from the book?), and cemented the ending.

In a way, it's these very "movie"-like parts that kind of ruined the film for me -- I wanted more The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and we got a little too much of a film like Gerry. I felt the book deserved something a little more stylized, a little less Hollywood, and a little more reflective of McCarthy's book. More varied dialogue between the two would have helped. It wasn't to be done away with as a minor part of the book sacrificed as a means to pump up the action so the movie could be more broad-reaching. They tended to repeat the same conversations over and over again -- and I remember this differently in the book. The film could have been shorter too -- that's one of the things that I admire about McCarthy's writing -- it's effective because it's so sparse.

One thing about the picture that's utterly worth raving about is the art direction. It's sobering to see the remnants of our civilization laid to waste and even more so to see humanity loose its essence as food becomes increasingly sparse. The whole film feels bathed in this greyish light, burned out fields where trees used to stand, garbage everywhere, stuff that people hold tight to becomes meaningless if you can't eat it -- strands of pearls are stepped on and over and money blows around like paper. The film looks amazing. Truly. Like I said, it's a good picture, totally worth seeing in the theatre, and wholly deserving (fingers crossed) of its Oscar potential.

But, holy crap were there knuckleheads in the theatre with us. It was packed but I'm not sure people knew what film they were seeing. Or taking their teenagers too? Wha? I know! One family left twenty minutes in and the kid beside me was half-asleep before the film ever really started. When the movie was over, the group of drunken middle-agers in front of us stood up and said, "Well, they sure were spare on the action in that weren't they?" I honestly wanted to ask them if they'd even heard of the book, but I held my tongue. Sort of...

TRH Movie - New Moon

Oh, be ready to throw the tomatoes at me, yes, I spent hard-earned money to go see New Moon for our Undeath Match. Luckily, I was accompanied by someone (Rachel) who both saw the cheese potential (so bad it's good) and has a similar penchant for some good, old girlie fun. But, wow, is this film ever bad.

Like, really, really bad.

Shame on you EW for giving it a B+. And shame on all you CinemaScore peeps for coming out of the film and handing over an average of A-.

For anyone living under a rock, a soppy teenage girl (Bella Swan, what a stupid name) is abandoned by her mother (awesome role model there) who got remarried and shipped her off to Forks, WA to be reared by her silent but sturdy father (town sheriff, natch), falls in love with a "smoldering" perma-teenage vampire (Edward Cullen). They swoon. They stare into one another's eyes. And by the end of Twilight, they were actually an honest to goodness couple -- chaste even by Mormon standards -- but a couple nonetheless. Enter New Moon and all the horrible metaphors that title implies.

Open Scene: It's Bella's birthday. Of course, no one's allowed to give her presents (because teenage girls just HATE stuff), and no one listens to her. Yawn. There's a party at the Cullen Manor and she gets a paper cut. Oh, the blood! It's so hard for the vampires to resist. Why? Because they're vampires, that's what they do, they suck the blood. Yawn. Edward decides that it's over, for Bella's own good. Because Bella, for the love of Pete, has no mind of her own. He leaves. She dies inside and suffers from an almost life-ending depression coupled with sweat-stained, sheet-scrunching nightmares.

Enter buffed up buddy Jacob who glides in with the cheesiest wig to end all wigs and abs to rival Tim Riggins. He's the only one who can pull Bella out of her post-Edward coma. They build motorcycles together because she needs to live on the "edge." Why? Oh, because that's when Spectral Edward shows up to tell her what to do. Again, why? Because Bella has no brain nor mind of her own. Quadruple yawn. Oh, and Jacob's a werewolf. Did I forget to mention that? Because all of her boyfriends are supernatural. She's just that special.

Jake and Bella bond. He wants more but there's a treaty in play, blah vampires versus werewolves, blah de blah. Edward moan, groan, moan. And I'm already tired of recapping the plot so let me just cut to a list of why this movie sucked so much I would have walked out if I was there by myself:

1. Why can't teenagers have fun? Even a little? Why are they always pouting and acting all angrily and not doing anything remotely like regular kids?

2. Seriously, shut up Edward.

3. Bella stands in a meadow (even though a terrible red-headed vampire named Victoria is hunting her) alone as a dread-locked vamp says, "I'm going to kill you, okay?" She sort of shrugs and doesn't move. Let's repeat that, she does NOT MOVE. She just waits for Edward to come and save her but because he's convinced being together would put her in too much danger, he's nowhere to be found. Wha? Run little girl, run. Fight, kick, scream, just do something other than pout cross-eyed at the damn man.

4. Again, even when he's not on screen I want Edward to shut up. Spectral Edward should have a sock shoved in his fog-inducing ass.

5. What happened to quality role models for girls? Where's Judy Blume when you need her? Where's Nancy Drew or Andie or Jo? Bella mopes around because of a boy, abandons her friends, who don't even say WTF when she decides to start talking to them again, abandons both school and her parents to run off at the very slight chance she'll even see Edward, and only acts when it relates to a boy (Edward or Jacob). She is consistently needing to be saved. She never, ever saves herself. And when they both say, "oh we can't be together because you might get hurt or I might hurt you," she curls up into a little ball and does a fat lot of nothing.

6. So, the whole wolf pack runs around with no shirts and cut-off pants. But when they change, what happens to the pants? The werewolves aren't wearing them and they're not flopping around anywhere on the ground. They magically disappear and then magically appear when they turn back. Those are some magical pants. Who cares about continuity when you have Taylor Lautner's abs?

7. Shut up Edward.

8. If Bella's dad's supposed to be a cop, and a good cop at that, how come he never notices a) her boyfriends all have freaky eyes and often walk around all the time without shirts and b) that they're supernatural? Hasn't he lived in Forks his entire life and isn't one of his closest friends a Native American?

9. The first movie sucked, but at least there was a cheese factor that made it kind of hilarious. That first moment when Edward sparkles, priceless. Here, they're all dour and angry -- pushing and pulling each other with no payoff.

10. The whole Team This or Team That is just dumb. Even though Edward got his ass kicked by the strange Michael Sheen headed cult thingy, Bella's so obviously in love with him (and if you've read the spoilers and/or the books) you know what happens. In fact, it doesn't matter what happens because it's all filler anyway -- it's a road block in between the happy ending. The story's been told a million times. However, IF I were to pick a side (and no serious, book-loving, 30-something woman has any right to even be talking about this), I'd have to go with Jacob. I know he has no chance but, let's face it, Edward got his pasty-emo handed right back to him in that (SPOILER) battle toward the end, and rightly so. The werewolves, as goofy as they are running around the forest in basically their underwear, can truly fight. That was the best part of the film, actually. The wolves battling it out and ripping the heads of the vampires. Pretty, pretty awesome. But don't tell Kimberly I said that.

11. SHUT UP, Edward.

I've been reading Twilight and I doubt I'll review it here -- what can I possibly say. Everyone knows the writing is horrible. It's akin to the worst stuff I've ever read in some of the worst creative writing classes I've attended. She tells way more than she shows, Meyer has never met a useless, moronic detail she didn't like, and, other than the setting, which I quite like, she breaks taboos that undermine the merit (if any) of her work. The struggle to be good, to be in love, all that good, juicy teenage stuff makes for good ingredients but what she cooks up couldn't be any more contrived if she tried. And yet, she's sold millions and millions of books. Let's just hope she's using some of her royalties for good and re-planting some of the trees she's destroyed over the years. It's like Stephen King pointed out, at least J.K. Rowling can write, you know?

#ShortcoversFail

Last week I was excited to try Shortcovers -- I've been reading manuscripts and classics on my Sony eReader for over a year, and now wanted to try to buy new content from a source that made it easy to transfer from device to device. Shortcovers promises this is easy. And let's keep in mind that I am not one to be afraid of technology. But many, many things went wrong:

1. On my way home from The Giller Light, I thought -- "cool, I'll download the winner (The Bishop's Man) to my blackberry and start reading it tonight." No such luck, I searched and searched, and couldn't find the book. #shortcoversfail.

2. The next day I thought, "it's got to be there now," as I searched for The Bishop's Man again. There it was, kudos to Shortcovers for having it up quickly. When I clicked, I got a message that I needed to buy this book. "Sure," I thought, and clicked to buy. I entered my credit card information. "This is not a valid credit card." I did it again. And again. And again. And again. It. Would. Not. Work. #shortcoversfail.

3. Then, Friday as I was tidying up my office, I dusted off my Sony eReader (I haven't been reading a pile of books electronically in the last little while), plugged it in and thought, "okay, I'll buy the books from Shortcovers, dump them on my eReader, and then transfer them to my blackberry." Logon to Shortcovers, buy The Bishop's Man and Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, and download them to my Adobe Digital Editions. Adobe Digital Editions says, "here they are!" And I can see the books. Next step, "plug in your reader and it'll automatically recognize it." Nope. I followed all the steps and for the life of me could not get my reader to pick up the Shortcovers content; this might not be their fault -- apparently I might need to update my Sony interface but because I'm at work, I don't have adminstrative capabilities for my laptop, I couldn't do that. #shortcoversfail.

4. Back to my blackberry. Apparently, once you've bought the books they should automatically download onto your phone because they're paid for. No. They don't. Oh, I can get the sample chapters but I've paid for the whole book -- not just the sample chapters. Nothing happened automatically nor was there a single useful "help" section that could be of assistance. Also, there's no phone number, just those annoying email customer service forms. #shortcoversfail.

5. Now, I've got two great books, both I'm dying to read digitally marooned on my laptop at work with no way of getting them anywhere else and feel like I've wasted $25.00. I HATE wasting $25.00. And what's worse -- I want the content, I want to be able to read it in both places, I want it to work. #shortcoversfail.

Anyone have any suggestions?

#63 - Nocturnes

Even before finishing the first story in Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, I had a sinking feeling that I shouldn't have started another book of short stories so soon after finishing Too Much Happiness. Overall, Nocturnes reads and feels like a bridge -- not a structure that connects two pieces of land, but that instrumental section in a song that marks a transition. The entire book feels like something Ishiguro has written in between major works. I missed the exacting, perfectly balanced narrative from Never Let Me Go, and had a hard time believing the characters in many of these stories. In places, the dialogue seemed forced, pitched in because it needed to be there and not because organic and/or interesting things were happening within the scene. And two of the middle stories were so, I don't know, cliched and almost forced, that I almost didn't finish the book. The last story, as I detail below, was a saving grace.

Sometimes, stories about music and the people who play and/or create it, never capture the true essence of the experience. You always feel as though it's not real -- the bands are made up, the musicians are made up, even when the author uses actual music to ground the story in some form of reality. In a sense, a lot of these stories read like those "ripped from the headlines" episodes of Law and Order where they take a real scene, Puff Daddy and J-Lo involved in a shoot out at a club, use no-name actors and tack on a murder to take the whole drama up a notch. Overall, this collection felt a bit like that, not utterly authentic, and I was disappointed because I firmly believe Ishiguro to be one of the world's best living writers.

The first story, "Crooner," follows a young guitar player who has emigrated from an Eastern block country to Italy where he's making a living. He meets a very famous singer, a kind of "great one" who came up in the days when crooning lead to fortunes being made in Vegas at a time when the original Ocean's Eleven was released into theatres. The aging crooner hires the young guitarist to accompany him as he serenades his wife. The performance, for many reasons is bittersweet, but the contract between the young and the old, their very different lives, what the crooner meant to the young man (who grew up with his mother listening to all of his albums), is poignant. Things are never as they seem, lives are never what they appear, and music doesn't always have the meaning it suggests.

The other three, and especially "Come Rain or Come Shine," are somewhat forgettable. There's a ridiculous element to that particular story ("Come Rain or Come Shine") that I didn't find believable, and despite liking the main character, a fellow who teaches English in Spain (who's kind of trapped in this transitory life), not a single secondary moved beyond a level of caricature. The tenuous connection to music wasn't enough to keep me interested in the mess the this fellow finds himself in as he visits two, married, university friends. Yet, even when I don't find the situation or the characters particularly engaging, I can still respect Ishiguro's talent -- a bad Ishiguro story is still better than most. There just didn't seem to be enough emotional consequence in any of the stories to keep me interested throughout the read.

The other story worth mentioning, the very last piece in the book, "Cellists," that was, by far, my favourite of the five. A young cellist starting me make his way in the world finds himself a teacher in an American tourist. They develop a deep and lasting teacher/student relationship over the course of a summer. She's running away from a relationship she can't quite decide if she wants to be in or not, and he's trying desperately to live up to both his talent and his potential. They each take something different from one another: she believes she's a genius, like him, and he believes his work is getting better simply through the power of her words, her explanations of what's wrong with his playing.

The narrator of this story, a bandmate and friend of the cellist, tells the story with a detached sense of wonder, in a way -- he sees the cellist years later, better dressed, nicely groomed, and is reminded of the strange summer they spent together. The last paragraph of the story might just be the best of the entire book -- it's pitch perfect in its assessment of both what happened to the cellist and how potential, or any kind of gift really, can easily slip away. It was utterly, heartbreakingly, authentic.

READING CHALLENGES: Ishiguro was born in Japan (even though he's lived in the UK since he was 5 or something), so I'm counting it as Around the World in 52 Books, which might just bring me to, oh, five books read for that challenge this year. Pathetic!

#62 - Too Much Happiness

Alice Munro has the ability to describe in one sentence what would take lesser writers paragraph upon paragraph to explore. She can disintegrate a years-long relationship in a sentence and it never feels jarring to the reader. She explores the essence of human experience in a way that highlights the aching, pressure-cooker way that people relate to one another. Nothing seems easy in Munro's world, yet it doesn't seem overtly melodramatic or necessarily posed to be dramatic. It's her innate skill to highlight the utter randomness of life and it's inherent losses. Secrets that are taken to people's graves. Lovers that ruin marriages. Short story writers that present a different view of a shared time period. It all sounds so cliche -- like the worst of Hollywood's blockbusters (yawn 2012). Yet at the deft hand of Munro these experiences are concise, cutting and often heartbreaking.

Of the 10 stories in the collection, I'd be hard pressed to pick a favourite. The novel-like depth of the title story, "Too Much Happiness," its ironic title, its compelling heroine (novelist-slash-mathematician Sophia Kovalevsky), was the weightiest in terms of page count, and somewhat unlike the other stories in the collection with its historical, non-Canadian setting. The day-to-day structure of Kovalevsky's life was in clear contrast to her academic life. In a way, the more successful she was at her work (regardless of how that success plays out in terms of stature), the less her personal life seemed in order. Regardless, Munro's story charges forward, driving home until its sad conclusions (I hope that's not a spoiler).

The underlying irony behind the entire collection, the idea that happiness, in its most cliched, Hollywood form, doesn't exist. The people in Munro's stories are content. They move forward in their lives because there's nothing else but to do -- and yet the existence of happiness haunts them all, from the young woman who has suffered an unspeakable tragedy, to the music teacher-slash-hippie-slash-performer. Each of the stories pulls you into a certain precise moment of human bliss, whether it's the birth of a child, a problem solved, or comfort in a marriage. And then, without being content to have her characters simply enjoy these moments, Munro pulls them out of their reverie, even if it's an everyday kind of thing, and puts them through the tough times. The opposite of happiness. Where survival means life has changed and change, coping or not coping with it, remains an integral part in what makes us human.

There's a scene in "Dimensions" that will haunt me forever -- it's a visceral, unthinking reaction that her character has to the horrible events going on around her. And there's moment in "Wenlock Edge" where the narrator describes another woman's hair (blonde) as a colour that always meant cheap to her (I'm paraphrasing terribly here; my copy of the book has been leant to a friend). Both of these small, tight sentences that appear not in the end, but in the middle of these two stories, are indicative of the power of Munro's work. I've been thinking about them for days. And once I get my book back I'll add the proper quotes (how's that for a lame review).

Masterful yet never manipulative, Munro gives you happiness, and its consequences, in its many forms in this collection. Take your own human heart with you as you read, realizing that it might be broken a little bit long the way.

READING CHALLENGES: Too Much Happiness is book four for this year's Canadian Book Challenge.

Monday: A Reading List

Our email is down at work for the moment and that means it's oddly quiet in terms of the interwebs. So, I'm stealing, "It's Monday! What Are You Reading?" from Jonita who participates in the original meme? idea? post? from J. Kaye's blog.

Books I Completed This Week Are: Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro and The Human Stain by Philip Roth.

Books I'm Currently Reading: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (ereader), Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro, Bitten by Kelley Armstrong (for The Undeath Match), The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. It's a toss-up which ones I'll actually finish this week.

What's Up Next?: Goodness, gracious me, I have no idea. Let's see what I finish above first of all.

What are you all reading?

#61 - The Human Stain

I'm not keeping any secrets here when I admit that I had a really, really hard time reading American Pastoral. In fact, I would say I was very anti-Philip Roth after finishing that novel. Never wanted to read another of his books again. Openly gave my copy of The Human Stain the stink-eye for littering my TBR shelf. Yet, I'm also addicted to lists (for reasons I'm still trying to work out, seriously, in therapy), and decided to give it a shot -- after all, I didn't hate the film, and I really liked the beginning of the book when it landed on my desk about four years ago.

Fast forward a few years. As I'm trying to clear off my shelves before bringing any more new books into the fold, I took The Human Stain OFF the giant TBR shelf and moving it to the bedside table. And am I ever glad that I did (how many of my book reviews start out this way? With my preconceived and often wrong perspectives of the various books on my shelves?).

In short, I loved this book.

Honestly.

I did.

The Human Stain tells the story of Coleman "Silky" Silk, a semi-retired Classics professor is forced into full retirement over the disgrace after using the word "spooks" (meant as ghosts; read as racist). The novel's narrator, a writer who hides up in the hills of this small Massachusetts town, slowly reveals the deep, and shaded, history of this broken man. An odd friendship between the two develops as Coleman's disgrace becomes at once both unbearably personal and utterly absurd at the same time. No one, least of all the woman who was married to him for years, and who subsequently died during the whole fiasco, knows the truth about the man -- (and if you've seen the movie this isn't a spoiler, if you haven't then SPOILER) that he's actually black and has been passing as a white, Jewish man for over 40 years.

At 71, Coleman has found a renewed interest in life post-incident in the relationship he's been having with 34-year-old Faunia, a janitor at the university who lives at a dairy farm, milking the cows to pay for her rent. Damaged by a disastrous relationship with her ex-husband, who has severe PTSD after returning home from Vietnam, Faunia is also coping with the tragic losses of her two children who died in a fire.

No one escapes untouched in Roth's world, characters are flawed, ashamed, damaged, destroyed, suffer physically, mentally, anguish over all kinds of things, and yet, in this novel it all works. At first, I thought he really didn't like women, when I read that Faunia was molested, illiterate and beaten, I did roll my eyes a little -- but then as you go deeper in the novel, she's actually one of the stronger characters. Sure she makes up lies to get through the day, but who doesn't. And sure she hasn't had a very nice life, but she also doesn't make excuses for herself. Regardless, their relationship seems almost redemptive in a way, for both of them. Which means, of course, SPOILER, that drastic, awful things must happen.

The narrative structure of the novel is simple -- a writer tells the story of Coleman's life, so close sometimes that we forget he's even there -- and that leaves way for Roth's complex and rich sentences to pull you deeply into the lives of these characters. It's an effective, literary novel, one that rewards the reader by the quality of the writing and not just simply by the essence of the story, if that makes sense. All in all, the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list didn't let me down this time. But Roth's still one-for-one: I'm still not convinced he's entirely an author for me.

READING CHALLENGES: 1001 Books.

#60 - Long Past Stopping

When the US presented this book at conference a world and a half ago, I was totally taken with the cover. The idea that the son of Jack Canfield, the author of those (ridiculous?) Chicken Soup for the Soul books, became a heroin addict and lived to tell the tale was intriguing. I did two things I never do: 1) judged a book by its cover and 2) picked up the book solely based on the fact that its blurb intrigued me. And trust me when I say I've got some issues with a book blurb. So much so that I rarely read them and almost never pick up the book because of them.

Annnywaaay. Oran Canfield's roughly my age but we've had two very different lives. First of all, he grew up with a fiercely intelligent mother (that's not so different from me) who pretty much kept him outside of your typical societal norms. He was raised by libertarians, went to an anarchist boarding school, joined the circus for a while (and competed as a juggler), and was often left with individuals who had questionable parenting skills yet nonetheless took part in forming him as he grew older. Secondly, his father left the family when he was very young and before his brother, Kyle, was born. Lastly, there's that whole heroin addict situation. Oh, and then there's the whole his dad became a multi-millionaire thingy too.

His memoir, Long Past Stopping, not unlike Dry by Augusten Burroughs, presents addiction in a harrowing yet utterly matter-of-fact way which makes it impossible not to get pulled into his story. There's irony in how addictive these kinds of memoirs are -- how easy it is to just keep reading as the hero (or heroine) moves from fix to fix. Gets themselves deeper and deeper into the black hole when they'd much rather be with that great girl that's finally showing them the time of day. Also, it might just be me, but it's so much easier to read addiction stories than it is to watch them (like say Intervention). There's a level of separateness once you know the author's gone through it and come out the other side. Also, Canfield's a survivor. He doesn't set out to get hooked on heroin. In fact, his introduction to the drug seems innocent rather than ominous, and the practical nature of how he starts shooting (he's simply wasting too much of the drug by smoking it) seems almost blase when you read it.

The tone of this book is consistently infused with his infectious, intelligent sense of humour. And while the writing might not be Nobel-prize worthy (I have to admit I felt the dialogue was particularly weak), it's impossible not to be interested in this book from start to finish. I'm willing to forgive things that I don't normally (like weak dialogue) when it comes to this book (because, let's face it, I'm a snob) primarily because the story itself, his life, is just so damn fascinating. And I'm willing to bet anyone else who picks up this book will end up with a Totally Inappropriate Crush on its author too. Just try it and see if you can put it down after browsing a few chapters. The structure of the book is smart too -- it vacillates between his childhood and his adulthood in a way that breaks up the more dramatic, traumatic moments, and it's certainly a relief when he finally finds his way off the junk.

Never say I don't use my power for good. Here's a quirky and fun road trip guest blog post he wrote for us over on The Savvy Reader. And to get a sense of his sense of humour, watch this video.

Where Does The Time Go?

There's a line in one of my (currently) favourite songs by The Raconteurs: "It's been a wasted, worried year." Kind of fitting, I think, for the last twelve or fourteen months. Usually it's my birthday that sends me into a fit of introspection -- but as I'm well passed my birthday and it was hell bent on almost-killing me this year, I've been spending the last few weeks thinking about what on earth I'm doing with my life. Ever since my mom died just over a year ago, it's as if my life was physically holding me back -- if that makes any sense. For every step I'd take forward, my own body would push me back, culminating in the "episode" from the summer with my appendix.

Like bits of shrapnel left behind, all of the stuff that's happened over the last year has finally started to work its way out. At least I feel that way. I feel lighter, and not just because I've lost a bunch of weight, but also because the sheer force of all that came down to rest upon my shoulders wasn't terrible. It was awful, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't wish this year on my worst enemy, but it's taught me a lot, and if you can take those lessons and move them into a more positive space, then it's not a complete mess, right?

Oh, how I wish that things turned out differently. I wish that a lot. But there are so many parts to my life that I don't control, and now that the disease seems back in remission for what feels like the umpteenth time, maybe what I need to do now is appreciate how much feeling healthy contributes to a better outlook on life. Yesterday, I walked halfway home and met my RRHB along the way (he was driving). I wasn't tired. I wasn't grumpy. I wasn't exhausted. The day hadn't pulled the life out of me teeth first. And it's easy to be mad at life. It's easy to hate your job, your station, your advantages, your disadvantages, your face, your legs, your grey hair, but it's another to stop for a moment, plugged into the iPod, enjoying the crisp air and the onset of my most-hated season, winter.

Anyway. I'm going to try to post more often. But holy crap, life is busy at the moment.

#59 - The Year of The Flood

Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood was a slow burn kind of book for me. It took me ages to read, I think I finished five other novels while I was reading this one, but that's not a comment on how much I enjoyed this book. A companion piece to Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood is a wholly satisfying story about a world hit by a waterless flood, and those people within who survive. I may be wrong, but I'd classify the book as speculative fiction -- it takes place just far enough in the future to make you second guess how we're living our lives and treating the earth, but it's familiar enough not to seem too out there (if that makes any sense).

The novel moves back and forth between life pre- and post-flood. For a time, the main characters, Toby and Ren, one older, one younger, despite the different ways they arrived, live together in the Gardeners commune, where traditional religion that we'd recognize as Western in its influence mixes with holistic approaches to health, the earth, and life. The Gardeners, lead by Adams and Eves, don't put chemicals in their bodies, they eat food that they grow, and many of them survive the waterless flood because of these skills.

At first, Toby resists the world of the Gardeners. She's survived this long by going underground, as dangerous as it is, and becoming a part of a community wasn't something she thought she needed to do. But slowly, as her skills as a naturalist, a healer, a beekeeper both evolve and are discovered, it's apparent she's found a place where she can belong -- whether or not she wants to become Eve Six.

Ren, however, doesn't have it so easy. As a young girl, her mother drags her away from her father's house -- safely ensconced in the highly programmed, chemical world -- as a result of an affair she has with one of the key Gardener men. She's a flake, there's no getting around it, and when the relationship goes sour, Ren's dragged back into the sterile world of her father's people, sent off to university at Martha Graham, and then out into the workforce, perhaps not in the job she would have once imagined for herself in high school. High school and the Gardeners define Ren (oh how this happens for so many people, ahem) and without these key people in her life, she's a little lost, a little heartbroken (over Jimmy, you'd remember him from the previous book -- Snowman). But both Toby and Ren are survivors and their stories, when woven together, are equally compelling.

There's nothing to do but be in awe of Atwood's imagination. But if I were to make one slight criticism -- I wasn't as inspired by the "poems" that started off each of the Gardener sections -- they seemed a bit contrived to me, but then, when you look through a hymn book in church, the sentiment is much the same, so perhaps I should just take them at face value. It's a sad book, a book that makes you appreciate the fact that you can still put a seed in the ground and have it grow into a plant that could feed you, the birds, and the butterflies. And one that perhaps sets a new standard for saint-like worship of unconventional heroes, especially those that survive.

READING CHALLENGES: The Year of the Flood is my third book in this year's Canadian Book Challenge.