BOOKS: Looking a Gift Book in the Mouth

Nobody ever talks about this, but coffee table books are the real reason why technology will never usurp the printed page.

Don't get me wrong, now: I love me some fancy-pants gizmos that will let me read books on the fly. Why, back in my days in the fast-paced world of internet consulting -- aaaaaalllllll the way back at the tail end of the last millennium -- I used to regularly load up my Palm Pilot with eBooks such as Sense and Sensibility or Peter Pan so that I could read while in line at the bank or during boring meetings. I can't even tell you how hard I worked to rationalize (ultimately unsuccessfully) to myself the necessity of buying a RocketBook. I guess I saved myself a few hundred bucks in the long run, but just think of the nostalgic value I deprived myself.

That's right. You're looking at a nerd who comes in two flavours. Don't pretend you're not one yourself.

At the same time, of course, I love the tactile nature of books. Books have a nice heft to them, and they smell good. I don't have many gadgets about which I could say the same.

But all that aside, if you sort of squint your eyes and make your vision go blurry just so, you can sort of see the argument that technology could render paper books obsolete. If Star Trek: The Next Generation is to be believed, we'll all be walking around with the complete folios of William Shakespeare on digital tablets.

But Gene Roddenberry never took into consideration coffee table books. Gorgeous covers and binding... slick, heavy, oversized pages... lavish photography and illustrations... I challenge the techie nerds to come up with a device that can compete with a well-executed coffee table book. Do you hear that, techie nerds? I challenge you!

The other great thing about coffee table books, aside from their sensuous production values, is that they make awesome gifts. I give a lot of coffee table books. I get a lot of coffee table books. And you can tell a lot about what somebody thinks about you by the coffee table books they give you.

Some recent-ish examples:

Spa
Holy crap, did someone say "lavish?" Because I've got your lavish right here. A beloved co-worker gave me this glorious Taschen book (the godmother and godfather of coffee table books) at my baby shower last spring. It's jam-packed with breathtaking photos of spas from around the world. Not only is this a book I was destined to own, for a long time I believed it was a book I was destined to create, along with my close friend -- and fellow spa enthusiast -- The Fabulous Suzi.
What this gift says: You are a hedonist who's not going to be able to leave the house until 2018.

The Nature of Great Apes
Speaking of The Fabulous Suzi, she gave me this book for my birthday a while back. Not only does it contain great information and awesome photos of great apes, it even has decent coverage of my favourite (and usually under-represented) great ape, the bonobo. Peace-loving. Matriarchal. Horny. What's not to love? We would all be well-served to be more like the noble bonobo.
What this gift says: You may think too much about the sex lives of other primates.

Sock Monkeys: 200 out of 1,863
And speaking of primates, I don't know much about the mating habits of sock monkeys, but you can tell just from looking at them that they must be randy little critters. My love of woollen primates is well-documented on this site, no doubt the reason why The Fair Danielle gifted me out of the blue with this fantastic book.
What this gift says: You might want to talk about things other than sock monkeys from time to time.

Pad: The Guide to Ultra-Living
Rusty gave me this funky book back when we were going through our bohemian, thrift-store scavenging, post-Burning Man, urban hipster doofus approach to interior decorating. Then he quickly appropriated it, loaned it to someone else without asking me, and had to be reminded that it was, after all, MY book when I coerced him into chasing it down. I'm not sure why I was in such a rush to get it back... perhaps because I needed the book's detailed instructions on how to upholster your TV in fun fur.
What this gift says: Can I borrow that when you're done?

Best of Bizarre
This is another Taschen gem. It was a Christmas gift from my delightfully quixotic (and by that I mean weird) friends Sue and Stefan. It's a sort of pictorial history of bondage and fetish gear throughout the ages. It's an interesting book... not least because I've never expressed any interest in the whole bondage and fetish lifestyle. And yet there it sits on my shelf, reminding me of a journey I've not taken. And that's kind of the way it is with some coffee table book gifts, isn't it? They're detailed essays of interests and lifestyles that might otherwise never have crossed your path. And in their own random way, they're not entirely unlike this world wide web of ours.
What this gift says: Want to come over to our house for dinner and... drinks?

BOOKS: "Onion-sauce! Onion-sauce!"

Occasionally, due perhaps to gas, bad dreams, or a general malaise about the sorry state of the world today, young Master Sam wakes up from his nap cranky and not his usual fabulous self... a state of being we've termed "crabulous."

So we hug him and pat him and reassure him that things will get better, we swear, but sometimes he just needs to fret for a few minutes before he collects himself.

This happened just last week. I thought that perhaps a change of scene would do him good, and as I carried him down the hall from his room to ours, I espied our copy of The Wind in the Willows and, on a whim, grabbed it and brought it with us. Sam and I have never read this book, but I figured, what the heck, it couldn't make things worse.

So I started reading. Within seconds, a huge sunny smile shone from my baby boy's face. He was entranced. As I continued reading, he grinned and beamed and generally bounced about in a state of extreme good cheer.

I can't say I blame him. The Wind in the Willows is some seriously awesome shit. So I thought I'd pass along the good vibrations. If you've got a case of the Mondays, read the following excerpt (preferably aloud) and I guarantee -- GUARANTEE -- you will feel better.

(Warning: 50 Books does not take responsibility for the consequences of your reading this passage, as it may prompt you to suddenly quit your job if you are currently sitting at your desk at work.)

THE Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said "Bother!" and "O blow!" and also "Hang spring-cleaning!" and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, "Up we go! Up we go!" till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

"This is fine!" he said to himself. "This is better than whitewashing!" The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout. Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the meadow till he reached the hedge on the further side.

"Hold up!" said an elderly rabbit at the gap. "Sixpence for the privilege of passing by the private road!" He was bowled over in an instant by the impatient and contemptuous Mole, who trotted along the side of the hedge chaffing the other rabbits as they peeped hurriedly from their holes to see what the row was about. "Onion-sauce! Onion-sauce!" he remarked jeeringly, and was gone before they could think of a thoroughly satisfactory reply. Then they all started grumbling at each other. "How stupid you are! Why didn't you tell him -- -- " "Well, why didn't you say -- -- " "You might have reminded him -- -- " and so on, in the usual way; but, of course, it was then much too late, as is always the case.

It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting -- everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering "whitewash!" he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.

He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before -- this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver -- glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.

I don't care how old or young you are, that is just plain amazing writing. I heart Kenneth Grahame big-time. If you want to keep reading (and I can't say as I blame you), the full online text of the book is here.

Happy Monday!

BOOKS: This Post Uses a Lot of Exclamation Points

So, I didn't get this post up this morning, as I'd intended.* But think of it this way: how many of your run-of-the-mill once-a-day bloggers give you a big, juicy, thiamine-enriched post to chew on over the weekend? Huh? Huh? Yeah.

Young Master Sam had only one nap today. One measly, thirty-minute nap. Do they make Sominex for babies? On the plus side (and isn't there always a plus side for us sunny, irritating, glass-is-half-full types?), Sam and I used all that extra play time to add two new games to our repertoire:

Hats! Gather every grown-up-sized hat in the house and sit in front of a mirror with your favourite small person. Proceed to plop each hat, one by one, on your small person's head. Watch their eyes bug out when they see themselves radically transformed. You can vary this game by trying on more than one hat at a time. Hilarity will ensue.

Bumps! Sit at the top of the stairs holding your small person in your lap, facing out. Scooch your butt forward so that you bump down to the next stair. (This is where your post-partum ass is finally a blessing.) Continue in this manner all the way down the stairs. Trust me, this game is WAY more exciting than it sounds. Sam almost lost his cool laughing, and that only happens once every few weeks. He's a tough customer.

But enough frivolity! Let's move right along to the post proper.

Winner of the National Book Award by Jincy Willett (#6)
One of the first signs that 2006 was going to be the Year of Doppelganger was when Cap'n Ganch surprised me with a copy of Winner of the National Book Award, a book I've been wanting to read ever since... well, ever since the Cap'n told me to.

Now, I must admit to being intimidated by this book. For one thing, EVERYBODY kept saying how funny it is. The Cap'n (for whom I have enormous book respect, largely because he tends to like the same books I do). And, um, some other people. And all the blurbs on the cover. "Riotous... hugely funny," stated The New York Times. "Hilarious black comedy," exclaimed The Miami Herald. "Unnerving, scabrously funny, spectacularly toxic," declared The Onion. (I love The Onion's blurb, if only for introducing me to "scabrously," my new favourite word. Use it in a sentence five times today and it can be yours, too!)

As if that weren't pressure enough, the picture of writer Jincy Willett on the back of the book scared the bejeebus out of me. She looks like one of your classic no-nonsense, wickedly sardonic tough cookies -- in other words, everything I would like to be and am not -- and if I didn't like her writing, what would that say about me? More important, would Jincy come up here and kick my sorry ass? She looks more than capable. (I wanted to post an author photo but couldn't find one online, so you'll just have to get your own copy of the book and see for yourself.)

So what if I didn't find it funny? Would that mean there was something wrong with me? And given that I've committed to writing honestly about the books I've read, what if I wrote something negative here? How could I keep the Cap'n from reading it? I thought about creating a diversion, but it's really hard to streak naked across the internet.

Fortunately, it didn't come to that, because I loved this book. It was funny! And therefore I must be normal! (Shut up, you.)

Winner doesn't purport to be great literature that will live on through the ages, and I'm totally cool with that. Because what this novel does do exceedingly well is relentlessly and unsympathetically skewer ("skewer"-- how do you like that word? I sound like a real book critic! Whee!) the current state of writing and publishing. And in the post-Frey literary universe we all inhabit, where truth and fiction are more uncertain than ever, Willett's story couldn't be more timely.

Narrated by Dorcas Mather -- the sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued local librarian -- Winner tells the story of Dorcas's twin, Abigail, who is as slutty as Dorcas is virginal. (I say "slutty" in the non-pejorative sense. Some of my best friends are sluts. Just so you know.) Dorcas recalls the sequence of events that led to Abigail's current state of arrest for the murder of her almost comically diabolical husband, Conrad Lowe. The event that sparks Dorcas's recollections is the release of a tell-all book about Abigail and Conrad's relationship, which Dorcas's library has just released, and which she must classify and shelve. Nifty, huh?

Dorcas and Abigail are the only characters in this novel who are not writers of some persuasion. Conrad writes horror novels. The talented but strangely perverse local poet (and winner of a National Book Award) Guy DeVilbiss (Geddit? DEVILbiss? Heh.) redefines the meaning of the phrase "objectifying women" when he places Abigail in the role of bizarre muse. And Guy's wife, Hilda, is the person who writes the tell-all book, couching it in asinine psychobabble that rings depressingly plausible.

Hmm...

You know, as much as I KNOW this sounds like a cheesy copout, I wrote some really insightful observations about this book... in my head, in the middle of the night, while I was rocking Sam back to sleep. I'm not even kidding. It was all about how Abigail and Dorcas go from being characters in other people's stories to subverting those people and, in their different ways, asserting their own stories. And there was some stuff in there about narrative honesty, and I think there was some other stuff about how even Dorcas, who you sort of think of as the most narratively pure person throughout most of the story, fools you when you realize that she's got her own hypocrisy and self-deception going on. And there were some other fairly decent observations, as well as some rather nifty turns of phrase, if I say so myself, but they're all gibbled up in my head and now I'm having a hard time writing down fresh stuff because vestiges of the old stuff are ricocheting around inside my noodle. Does this ever happen to you? Because man, it bugs. Why don't I write this shit down? You'd think I'd know better by now.

Apropos of nothing, there's also some great stuff in this novel on the sensual nature of reading, which pretty much sums up how and why I read. It's between pages 279 and 282, if you're interested.

Anyway. Don't let my half-assed post deter you from this book. It may not be destined for great books status, but it's pretty friggin' smart and funny. And that's saying a lot these days.


*Yes, I realize that I'm the only person who cares about my arbitrary schedule and deadlines. But if we don't have schedules and deadlines, what do we have? Anarchy! Chaos! Bad spelling! Weird smells!

ETC: I Put the "Re" in Front of "Tardy"

I'm aaaaaalmoooost done a new bookish post, which will go up tomorrow morning if Sam EVER takes a nap. Sorry about my spazziness this week. Is there some kind of planetary retrograde going on right now? Is the fact that I asked that question a symptom that I've lived on the west coast too long? Do you despise me a little bit right now? It's okay to say yes.

And I haven't forgotten about the Worst Date Ever challenge! Our judge, The Don -- who in addition to being the sweetest, most accommodating man imagineable, is also a kick-ass video editor -- got overbooked in the favours-for-friends department when he also agreed to help some other friends produce a music video. I've seen him three times in the past week, when he dashes in to change clothes, then dashes out again with a harried look on his face. If you want to lean on him to commence the judging, you go ahead, you monster. I don't have the heart.

And now I have to go remove the dog's tail from young Master Sam's mouth.

...

Okay, that's done.

Hypothetical question for you:

Say you're changing a baby's poopy diaper, and you haven't wiped quite all the poo off said baby's bum. And say you turn your back for a second -- just a second, mind you -- and when you turn back you discover the dog licking the last poo smear off the baby's bum. As hygiene issues go, where would your greater concern lie: with the dog or with the baby?

I said this is a hypothetical question, right?

ETC: The Games Babies Play

Man, is it Wednesday already? Jesus. I think I fell in the shower on Monday, hit my head and lost time, because I don't remember anything about yesterday. At all.

One thing I can tell you is this: these days, I've had to get really creative to carve some writing time out of my day. Why, you ask? Because young Master Sam seems, overnight, to have transformed into a toddler. And yes, I'm at least as freaked out by this as you can imagine.

I mean, one minute he's this little sack of potatoes I can place in the middle of the floor with a few toys, leave the room, and come back a minute later to find him in the same place. And now he's this wriggly 25-lb human slinky who demands to be placed on the floor so that he can race over to the nearest outlet, wrap his lips around it, and attempt to suck electricity directly from the wall into his body.

Fortunately, his lordship still consents to nap twice a day, or else I would actually be tearing my hair in fistfuls from my head. Because in the two-to-four-hour interims between naps, he demands constant stimulation. And since ten-month-old children don't grasp the finer points of sophisticated strategy games such as, say, Hungry Hungry Hippo, the onus is on yours truly to invent games that suit Sam's exacting tastes.

Some recent favourites:

Pillow Mountain!
Take every available pillow and throw cushion in your home and pile them on the middle of your floor. Since most kids this age still have an "as the crow flies" approach to navigation, the fun part of this game is placing the baby on the opposite side of the mountain and encouraging them to climb it without the use of ropes or belaying devices.

Moon Walk!
A variation on Pillow Mountain!, this game involves scattering the pillows across the floor, then covering the whole kaboodle up with a large blanket so that it resembles the craterous surface of the moon. Babies get to practise their ATV skillz traversing this terrain.

What's in Your Mouth?
The object of this game, if you're Sam, is to stuff as many things you find on the floor -- carpet lint, cat hair, broken chips of linoleum (and ideally a combination of all three) -- in your mouth and begin chewing methodically. The object of this game, if you're me, is to minimize the amount of time this grotesque little tumbleweed stays in Sam's mouth. Scoring operates on a point-per-second basis, with the goal being to score as few points as possible. Your score adds up throughout the day. If you reach a total of 60 points before nightfall, you don't lose, exactly, but you have to live with the knowledge that you let a nasty sphere of grossness fester in your young child's mouth for a full minute.

Mom's in the Fridge!
Playing peekaboo with your hands or a blanket is all well and good... for other babies. In this more extreme version of the game, however, the object is to convince Sam that I've climbed completely inside the refrigerator (through clever manouevring of myself and the fridge door). Imagine the surprise when mom pops out out of the fridge, unfrozen and unscathed! Good times.

Who Is That Handsome Devil in the Mirror?
This game requires a big enough mirror to allow both you and baby to see yourselves at the same time. Then you ask a series of questions, beginning, of course, with "Who is that handsome devil in the mirror?" You point at the baby and say (in our case), "It's Sam!" then you proceed to ask various questions about the physiology of said handsome devil: "Where is that handsome devil's nose?" or "Where is that handsome devil's ear?" or "Where are that handsome devil's feet?" etcetera etcetera. You can try to mix things up by asking questions about that handsome devil's rather dashing companion, but these are seldom as well received.

Last Stand at the Ol' Blanket Fort!
This is a variation on a game I learned from my friend Anne-Marie, who has a baby -- also named Sam -- who is also around Sam's age. The self-serving purpose of this game is to buy more sleeping-in time in the morning. You bring the baby under the covers with you and try to convince him or her that there are cattle rustlers/bandits/old-timey prostitutes lurking outside and that you both need to hide. You think that a baby can't get this concept? Think again. If your acting skills are decent, they pick up from your voice that some suspense is under way and they lie quietly, waiting for the next cue from you. If you're lucky, you both lie quietly long enough to fall back to sleep. Yee-haw!

Where's the Dog?
This one started off as an ordinary game of Follow the Leader, with me crawling on all fours and Sam following, but I found that Sam likes to have a goal or else he suspects that the game may be pointless. So now the goal is to find Dobbs, who -- unbeknownst to him -- is Sam's new best friend. While I'm crawling in the lead, I keep turning back to Sam and asking, "Where's the dog? Where's the dog?" which gets him helplessly worked up, which he in turn takes out on poor old long-suffering Dobbs. An earlier version of this game -- called "Where's the Cat?" -- had to be discontinued due to inconsistent team spirit among all the participants.

(As an aside, I need to warn you that crawling is not as easy as babies make it look. It fucking KILLS your knees, dude, especially on wood floors. Try to stick with carpeted areas if you can.)

Counting Laps!
This is a game of last resort. You've played all the other games, but your baby has energy to burn (which makes you wonder, given the popularity of crystal meth, if he's been sneaking out to buy some, and if so, why isn't he sharing?) and there's still half an hour till naptime. If the layout of your home permits, take your baby by the hands and walk him in laps around the house. You can count the laps if you want to maintain the pretence that this is a learning game, but you and I both know it's all about wearing the little knee-biter out so he collapses in his crib. If the configuration of your house does not allow for laps, this game is easily adapted by using an out-and-back route.

In the interest of rendering this blog topical, I'll add that I think this game lends itself most readily to the Olympics. I mean, speed, repetition, going in circles... if these qualities don't scream "international sport!" to you, you haven't been paying attention. So get those petitions started. Counting Laps in 2012!

So that's what we've been up to.

The problem with these games -- as awesome as I'm sure you'll agree they all are -- is that, in the time I've taken to commit them to the published word, they've probably already become obsolete. My next attempt to play them with Sam will be greeted with the kind of expression you'd get if you presented a 10-year-old today with your treasured Coleco Vision. It's demoralizing. Last week, I hit on a rare formula that actually caused Sam to bust out in hysterical laughter (no easy feat, let me tell you). It involved picking him up and snurfling loudly into his neck while at the same time doing a sort of shuffle-stomp loop around and around the ottoman. He was helplessly enthralled by the physical comedy stylings of mom.

Or so I thought. My attempt to replicate this experiment when Rusty got home was greeted by stony silence and an expression that said something along the lines of, "Really now, Mater. This is most vicariously embarrassing. Please do compose yourself, woman."

And back to the drawing board. In the meantime, seeing how many pieces of puffed rice will stick to your baby's face is always fun.

BOOKS: No Sex, Please. We're Indian.

If you've ever wondered what exactly a blog is (and according to the link I'm about to provide, 62 percent of you do), then this article (in the Financial Times, no less) provides a comprehensive background on the origins and rise of blogging and the blogosphere's current level of celebrity.

And since no think-piece on this subject would be complete without its author's gloomy misgivings about blogging's credibility and future, it has that, too:

But as with any revolution, we must ask whether we are being sold a naked emperor. Is blogging really an information revolution? Is it about to drive the mainstream news media into oblivion? Or is it just another crock of virtual gold - a meretricious equivalent of all those noisy internet start-ups that were going to build a brave “new economy” a few years ago?

I have to admit that I only skimmed this article, so it kind of read as "Blah blah blabbidy blah revolution blah blah old media blabbidy blabbidy information reformation blah blah blah." But as we used to say back in my old IRC days, YMMV. So feel free to read it and get back to me with your more comprehensive impressions.

As much as I like to write in my site and to read other people's sites, I find reading about blogging to be sort of the navel-gazing equivalent of watching the Oscars, and I don't do that, either. But the piece caught my attention near the end, when its author, Trevor Butterworth, surveyed people like Heather and Jessica of Go Fug Yourself, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, and Ana Marie Cox, the blogger formerly known as Wonkette, and asked if they thought George Orwell or Karl Marx would have blogged.

The question, Butterworth claims (only after presenting us with everyone's answers), is rigged, apparently so that he can deliver a gloomy summation to his argument... a summation that he seems to have predetermined before even writing this piece. And boy howdy, here's where I have to mention that the last sentence of this opus magnus is one of the more tragically purple bits of prose I've read in a while. Dude needs to lighten up a fair bit. It's just blogging, Trevor! Come in off the ledge!

Anyway, the mention of Orwell reminded me of this awesome piece that Rusty pointed me toward the other day. It's Orwell's essay "In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse," in which Orwell takes on those critics who castigated P.G. Wodehouse for ostensibly spreading Nazi propaganda over the radio airwaves after he was captured by German soldiers during the Second World War:

If my analysis of Wodehouse's mentality is accepted, the idea that in 1941 he consciously aided the Nazi propaganda machine becomes untenable and even ridiculous. He may have been induced to broadcast by the promise of an earlier release (he was due for release a few months later, on reaching his sixtieth birthday), but he cannot have realised that what he did would be damaging to British interests. As I have tried to show, his moral outlook has remained that of a public-school boy, and according to the public-school code, treachery in time of war is the most unforgivable of all the sins. But how could he fail to grasp that what he did would be a big propaganda score for the Germans and would bring down a torrent of disapproval on his own head? To answer this one must take two things into consideration. First, Wodehouse's complete lack -- so far as one can judge from his printed works -- of political awareness...

The other thing one must remember is that Wodehouse happened to be taken prisoner at just the moment when the war reached its desperate phase. We forget these things now, but until that time feelings about the war had been noticeably tepid. There was hardly any fighting, the Chamberlain Government was unpopular, eminent publicists were hinting that we should make a compromise peace as quickly as possible, trade union and Labour Party branches all over the country were passing anti-war resolutions. Afterwards, of course, things changed.

Interesting stuff. I knew about Wodehouse having been captured at the start of the war (while playing golf, believe it or not) and about his radio show, of course, but since I have huge, glaring holes in my knowledge of, oh, the entire history of the world, I didn't realize that there was a tepid phase during WWII.

And then THAT essay reminded me of this article, which Rusty also sent me, that talks about Wodehouse's current popularity in India, which is pretty friggin' cool, in my opinion:

In a country where most books in English sell fewer than 1,000 copies and 5,000 constitutes a bestseller, the corduroy-suited Abraham estimates that his company sells up to 70,000 Wodehouses a year: part of a thriving “retro-market” that ranges from Agatha Christie to Modesty Blaise.

Most Wodehouses are bought by middle-class Indians whose public school-like “English-Medium” education arguably equips them to appreciate the author’s verbal virtuosity and literary allusions better than many Brits.

“Wodehouse’s appeal is a pure sense of linguistic delight,” says Abraham, who has read “about 82” of his 85 books. “In the 1980s there was a debate about whether he was ‘literary’ or not, but the fact is that the books are a great read, laughaloud funny.

“It’s a whole world of clean, wholesome, escapist fun and parents here like to hand it down to their children. Today’s humour is fairly dark, but the appeal of these books for parents is: ‘No sex please, we’re Indian’.”

If you want to check out some first-hand press about the Indian obsession with Wodehouse, you can also read this lovely piece by writer Shashi Tharoor, published in India's national newspaper, The Hindu. Tharoor movingly recalls the moment, twenty-seven years ago, that he learned of Wodehouse's death, a moment as profound for him as other people's recollection of where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the death of Kennedy, Marilyn, Elvis, Lennon, or Cobain:

VALENTINE'S Day has just passed. Twenty-seven Valentine's Days ago, I was sitting in my college room at Delhi University when All India Radio announced that P.G. Wodehouse had died. It was a typically sunny February afternoon in Delhi, but I felt a cloud of impenetrable darkness. The newly (and belatedly) knighted Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, creator of Jeeves and of the prize pig the Empress of Blandings, was in his 94th year; yet his death still came as a shock. Three decades earlier, Wodehouse had reacted to the passing of his stepdaughter, Leonora, with the numbed words: "I thought she was immortal." I had thought Wodehouse was immortal too, and I felt the bereavement keenly.

Perhaps Wodehouse proves Trevor Butterworth wrong. Perhaps you can write prolific nonsense and still be beloved and immortalized. That's what I'm holding out for, anyway.

[Some links via Arts & Letters Daily]

BOOKS: I Put the "Me! Me!" in "Meme"

The time difference has knocked out DoppelSis, so she's all tucked up in bed right now. So here I am to remind y'all to make sure you get your Worst Date Ever story posted by the end of day today.

And in a surprise move, my charming housemate The Don has agreed to act as guest judge for this contest! (I asked The Don because he recently went on a blind date in which his date literally did not stop talking about herself. It's only because The Don is so sweet and unassuming that he didn't call shenanigans on her for it. Can you imagine? So I thought he might be in a position to offer fresh commiseration for your stories.)

And in another surprise move, Liz has tagged me with one of those blog meme thingies you hear about. I thought filling this out would be an easy, throwaway task, but I actually had to THINK, dagnabbit.

1) Name five of your favourite books.

Harriet the Spy - Probably my first favourite book. I love Harriet. She's hard as nails, calls it like she sees it, and is precocious as all get out. In short, she's who I wish I could be.

Howard's End - Only connect, dude.

Travels with Charley - Steinbeck takes a road trip around America with his standard poodle, Charley. I wish I could've gone with them.

Tender Is the Night - It's probably Fitzgerald's messiest, most ambitious novel, but I read it every year or so and find new stuff in it every time.

Larry's Party - My favourite Carol Shields novel, and that's saying something. She brings beauty and narrative symmetry to the life of a regular schlub like you or me. I love her for that.

2) What was the last book you bought?

An Alphabet for Gourmets by MFK Fisher, which I wrote about here.

3) What was the last book you read?

Heh, well, I just wrote about it here, but it's The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby. But if you want to know what I'm reading now, it's Neil Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood. It's pretty interesting, but for some reason I'm moving really slowly.

4) List five books that have been particularly meaningful to you (in no particular order).

Oh, gosh. I think I blew my load writing about my favourite books. Hmm... let me think.

The Secret of the Old Clock - This Nancy Drew book was the very first chapter book I ever read. It was a gift from my mom on my eighth birthday. I also remember that I was allowed to stay home from school with a trumped-up cold so that I could read it.

Garden of Eden - This book will always make me think of full days spent at the beach reading with my friend Schimpky, the only other person I've ever known who can spend hours reading AND hours lying in the sun without getting bored.

The Happy Prince - I loved this story when I was a kid. Once, when I was six or seven, my mom woke me up -- just me, not my brother or sisters -- because the animated version of the story was on TV. We cuddled on the sofa and watched it all by ourselves in the dark, quiet house, then she tucked me back into bed. It was magical.

Pride and Prejudice - This was the first Jane Austen novel I read. I picked it up when I was 16 or 17, and it was the first time I experienced the special excitement I've since always felt when reading great classics.

Anything ever written by Stephen King - The first night I met Rusty -- after a first-year "great books" class we were taking -- we walked most of the way back to our respective homes arguing about King's merits as a storyteller. I argued for the fact that King has undeniable gifts; Rusty argued against. It was a great debate. Conversationally, I'd rarely felt more alive! At some point near the end, I realized that Rusty had never actually read anything by King. That pretty much set the tone for all our future debates. How could I ever want that to end? So we got married.

5) Name three books you've been dying to read but just haven't gotten around to it?

Hmm... this question is actually a bit depressing because I realize that, while there are some books I'd like to read, I wouldn't describe myself as dying to read anything at all right now. Jesus, what a downer.

So instead, here are some books I'd love to read... if only they existed:

The Lost Novels of Jane Austen
Harriet the Spy II
Can You Believe It? Still More Bertie and Jeeves

6) Tag five people and have them fill this quiz out on their own.

I'll start with Wing, despite the fact that I bet she hates stuff like this. BWAHAHAHAHA! (Sorry.)

And I'll add four of my other favourite book nerds, and wish I could add more: Cap'n Ganch, Jagosaurus, Carrie, and Mike.

That was my first meme! That's right, I was a meme virgin. Thanks for being gentle, Liz.

WEB: Bloggedy Blog Blog Blog

My younger sister, hereafter to be referred to as DoppelSis, is in town for a few days, so my posting may be sporadic. Or not! Who can say!

In the meantime, I'd like to pose a question:

Why are all the funniest, smartest, raddest people I read only published online? Why aren't they getting book deals and tall dollars just to blog? Because, really, the world needs more of what they're dishing out.

In related news, I had a dream last night that I was hanging out with Heather Armstrong. Does this mean I'm spending too much time online?

BOOKS: Stories for the Under-Three Bibliophile Set

When did kids' books get so fucking awesome?

I guess there were cool books when I was a little kid, but I'll be damned if I can remember what they were. Picture books were not exciting to me when I was a wee Doppelganger. But these days, it seems like there's been a renaissance in children's books, and I'm finally all worked up about them.

Take Got Your Nose: A True Story, in which "a game of Got Your Nose between two brothers spins out of control when one brother inflicts greater and stinkier abuses on the other's nose." Great title... check. Great story... check. Great art... check. The author, Ragnar, apparently has "a large, international following of fine art collectors." That's... well, that's pretty cool, actually.

And oh my god, speaking of cool, the so-hip-it-hurts creative merging of photography and illustration in Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale absolutely blows my mind. Caldecott medal winner Mo Willems, whose other titles include Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Leonardo, the Terrible Monster, has created compelling artwork that is at least as attractive to grown-ups as it is to kids.

Vancouver-based publisher Simply Read Books has a set of winners with authors Robin Mitchell and Judith Steedman's Windy series. Young Master Sam has all three books in the set: Windy, Sunny, and Snowy & Chinook. These are simple, feel-good stories accompanied by beautifully photographed tableaux of hand-crafted people, animals, and settings. Even better, both Sunny and Snowy & Chinook come with CDs featuring tracks by up-and-coming indie bands like Young and Sexy and The Secret Three. Both CDs are great, but my favourite is the one that comes with Snowy & Chinook. Sometimes I listen to it when Sam's in bed. It's that good.

One Little Bug is a deceptively simple counting book by another Vancouver writer/illustrator, Paola Van Turennout. I think the story kind of goes over Sam's head right now, but I test-drove it on our two-year-old friend Saelin just this past weekend, and she was captivated. Some day, Sam! In the meantime, you keep on chewing on those board books, little buddy.

Everyone knows that babies are illiterate, and babies use this fact to get out of doing a lot of work. No more! With simple, easy-to-follow illustrations, Baby, Make Me Breakfast and Baby, Mix Me a Drink (both from the McSweeney's Baby Be of Use series) mean that your little shirker no longer has an excuse to keep from earning his or her keep. (I have to mention that, since these books arrived from Wing Chun and Glark at Christmas, I've been meaning to do a photo shoot with Sam surrounded by martini shakers and various bartending accoutrements, with the books open at various recipes. Unfortunately, I'm at least as lazy as my baby. But in my head the photos are awesome!)

Of course, you still can't go wrong with Dr. Seuss. So far, we've collected Green Eggs and Ham (of course), Fox in Socks (per Wing's reliably excellent recommendation), Horton Hears a Who (which always makes me cry), The Cat in the Hat (though that cat has always bugged me, I have a strange affection for Thing 1 and Thing 2), One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (still my favourite), and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

I am, as you might expect, always on the lookout for cool picture books, old and new. Fire your recommendations my way.

CONTEST: Take This Book. Please! (Week 2)

Okay, last week I said that I'd confess my own academic misconduct after the contest was over. At first, I was hard-pressed to remember any, other than forgetting to take an exam in second year university, and I was kind of chagrined at what a pussy I was.

But then the floodgates of memory opened up, and woohoo, was I ever a badass! Well, a mid-level badass. But still! I was the kid who, in grade two, finished my assignments during class and WROTE POETRY in the remaining time, so any badassery on my part is good.

In grade 11, I faked my major business project for the term. As in, I didn't do it at all, but pretended I'd handed it in. I hated the teacher (a rare thing for me because, at worst, I usually only feel benign indifference toward the people who try to steer my past the rocky shoals of academia) because he was a misogynist and an asshole. He was also sloppy and disorganized, a fact I used brazenly to my advantage. A couple of weeks after we'd all "handed in" our assignments, I casually asked him if he'd marked mine yet because I was "dying" to know how I did. He said that he hadn't gotten to mine yet. He was one of those teachers that hand assignments back haphazardly to a few people at a time. When about half the class had gotten theirs back, I asked him about mine again. This time he seemed visibly nervous, and he said that he hadn't gotten to mine yet. I asked again a week or two later. Same reply. I didn't ask again, but near the end of the term, when he posted the class list with all our assignment grades, I apparently got an A.

In grade 12, I dictated my best friend's essay on King Lear to her during the lunch break before it was due. She got an A-minus, and to this day I still have never read King Lear.

In my third year of university, I had, er, pre-conjugal relations in the administration wing's Senate Chamber.

In none of those instances did I get caught. My most embarrassing moment probably has to be when the roles were reversed and I was working as an instructor in a continuing education program on writing for the web at a local community college. I was in my late twenties, and many of my students were only a couple years younger than I. I was also a fairly active member of the city's underground party scene. And I was also really into bellydancing at the time. Friends of mine were throwing this huge, lavish, all-night, Arabian-themed party and procured my services as a dancer. There was only one washroom at the loft where the party was being held, and of course it had a curtain instead of a proper door with a lock LIKE A NORMAL BATHROOM. So I was in the middle of changing into my costume when someone burst in to use the loo. And of course it was one of my students. It's hard to say which one of us was more shocked and appalled. Needless to say, we never spoke of it in class.

But when it comes to academic shenanigans, I am a babe in the woods compared to our guest judge, Rusty. When I asked Rusty to sum up his entire academic career, he described it as "like watching The Challenger blow up in slow motion." I was a witness for much of it, and can attest that this is true.

And now, from the guy who puts the "rust" in "rusticated," here -- in Rusty's own words -- are the honourable mentions, the grand prize winner, and the winner in Rusty's new surprise category: "Tries hard but needs improvement."

Doris Day's cocaine story. Flawless example of kid logic.

EMC and friends agreed to leave class. This is not an exciting story, but I like the futility of the endeavor. It's like a Sartre novel. The combination of picking on a teacher for no good reason and the sorry escape attempt, coupled with the total lack of consequences, highlights the absurdity of the academic experience.

Anonymous faked an interview for a college religious studies class. Beautiful. This is disrespectful on so many levels. Not only did you burn your program, you also managed to burn an entire profession... evangelical Christian broadcasters, no less. Bravo.

TabloidMan's poisoning-the-teacher story is pretty up there. The youthfully sociopathic guiltless fear made me feel the same hopelessness for the future that I felt while watching A Clockwork Orange. Extra points for this being a Christian school. And the way it finishes, with the poisoning praised by the other kids... pure William Golding. I almost thought we should give you the prize just so you don't come kill us with trumpet cleaner.

Mary (re: stealing another's story, and blowing my mind). Cute, but no cigar. You may be a nerd, but you're a nerd with some life in you. Keep up the effort!

Allie, I went to Catholic school, too, but what kind of crazy Catholic school did you go to? You had to not only read Crime and Punishment, but you had to write a prayer reflecting on each chapter? That's a little freaky. Good on you for using the Cliff's notes to help you along, but I'm afraid you don't win.

Jon didn't hand in a test and bluffed his way to a B-minus. Nice work. You didn't aim too high with the grade, and you played your liberal teacher for the moral relativist he is. You speculated on his weakness of character and won. You don't, however, win the book. I am sorry.

Rebecca the Librarian, while it is cool that you burned your classmates and avoided having to take the course through your knowledge of computers, I'm going to fail you anyway. You see, the problem is that you were too smart for the course. True academic misconduct is always the stupid putting the bite on the smart. [Ed: That is a true -- and brilliant -- observation.] I'm sorry, but no book for you.

Griffin, let me get this straight. You basically wrote something like "blah blah blah blah blah Frank Lloyd Wright blah blah blah blah," and got a B-minus?

Wow. How do you walk with those cojones? It must be like having a pair of exercise balls in your pants.

You win!

For his enviable lack of shame, Griffin wins books by a pair of philosophers who very well might send him to his room to think about what he's done: Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ and Gide's The Immoralist and Strait is the Gate.

But wait, there's more! Rusty identified one other entry that he wanted to award a special prize to. His comments follow:

Em, you're freaked because you missed out on the film studies seminar to go see a real movie? You did the right thing, trust me. The less you know about film the better.

As a general rule of thumb, most people dislike people who study film. Even people who study film don't really like other people who study film. You did yourself a big favour going to see a movie everybody else sees. This way you have something in common with other people. Remember... the lowest common denominator has been slandered as something undesirable. Don't knock it till you try it.

As for stressing over cutting class, you need to stop worrying and enjoy yourself. You still passed, right? Class will still be there when you decide to go again. I'm sure you'll manage to graduate, or not, but really... who cares? You'll do fine.

You win The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps. You'll like it. Its weirdly bearded author Marshall T. Savage may be a crazy son of a bitch, but he just may be on to something.

All right, Griffin and Em. You heard the man. To claim your prizes, fire your mailing info over to me at 50books [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thanks to everyone who entered! And remember: there are no losers, only non-winners.

Now on to this week's challenge.

Your Worst Date Ever

In honour of Valentine's Day, the holiday everyone loves to hate, post your worst date story in the comments section of this entry. The person who makes me recoil in horror-slash-disgust-slash-pity the most will win copies of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and Henry James's The Wings of the Dove.

Because as bad as your date story might be (and I have no doubt y'all have some doozies), it always helps to get some perspective.

ETC: Gone Phishin'

No new post today, I'm afraid. Rusty's laptop just crapped out, so he needs to borrow mine in order to blog from this blogging conference. And since he blogs for a living, whereas I only blog because I'm obsessive, his need trumps mine.

Don't forget to submit your Worst Episode of Academic Misconduct entry by the end of today! I'll be announcing the winner (and the next challenge) on Monday.

In the meantime, keep it real. Or at least convincing.

BOOKS: Let's All Learn to Use Our Feeling Words

I'm a bit late posting today, but The Fabulous Suzi phoned me from London this morning, and when The Fabulous Suzi calls, you take the call. Because she's fabulous.

Runaway by Alice Munro (#5)
Almost a year ago, I waxed rhapsodic about Alice Munro, who I claimed "has never written a bad sentence in her life." I went on to say that I'd love to inhabit Munro's head for just an hour, in a Being John Malkovich sort of way, so that I could see the world with the clarity and complexity that her prose reflects.

In the comments section of that entry, Diablevert agreed that Munro is brilliant, but respectfully disagreed with me about the fact that sharing thoughtspace with Munro would be as uplifting as I hoped:

But all her main characters are cold --- cold hearts and warm brains, people who are capable of tremendous intellectual excitement and tremendous personal detachment. The pressure in the stories is almost always about the attempt of a bright, passionate individual to break free of a repressive, constrained society, and that bright individual never has any pity for those who would confine it, be they their mothers or fathers or children...

This assertion has lived ghostily in the back of my brain for months, and I brought it out and used it as a lens through which I (finally!) read Munro's latest short story collection, Runaway, and I'm going to have to respectfully disagree myself. While I concede Diablevert's point in much of Munro's earlier work, Runaway comprises a set of stories that surprised me with the breadth of its characters and their motivations, as well as with Munro's newfound (or newly discovered, anyway, because I'm slow-witted that way) to drop a twist at the end of her stories that makes you gasp (for real, an honest-to-god gasp) just the slightest.

In the eponymous first story, the main characters are Sylvia, a recent widow, Carla, a naive, almost childlike younger woman whom Silvia has befriended, and Clark, Carla's husband, who is what psychologists might call "verbally abusive," which is longhand for "an asshole." seeing Carla particularly upset one day, Sylvia warmly encourages her to leave her husband and arranges for her to travel to Toronto and stay with a friend. The outcome of these events is an encounter between Sylvia and Clark that, in typically subtle Munro fashion, forges a strange bond between them. And again in typical Munro fashion, the dynamics of all the relationships in the story shift and settle, unsettling you with the reminder that relationships are transient and as likely to be changed by minute, uncontrollable events as by cataclysmic, see-it-coming-from-a-mile-away ones.

This idea pops up again and again in this collection, including in my favourite story, "Trespasses", which is told from the perspective of 13-year-old Lauren. One of Munro's stock characters is the wise child, but of course in her hands this character is anything but stock. Lauren, raised by her liberal, wordly parents, Eileen and Harry, appears to her peers to be priggish and innocent precisely because she has seen and done so much.

And that was what separated her, just as much as knowing how to pronounce L'Anse aux Meadows and having read The Lord of the Rings. She had drunk half a bottle of beer when she was five and puffed on a joint when she was six, though she had not liked either one. She sometimes had a little wine with dinner, and she liked that all right. She knew about oral sex and all methods of birth control and what homosexuals did. She had regularly seen Harry and Eileen naked, also a party of their friends naked around a campfire in the woods. On that same holiday she had sneaked out with other children to watch fathers slipping into the tents of mothers who were not their wives. One of the boys had suggested sex to her and she had agreed, but he could not make any progress and they became cross with each other and later she hated the sight of him.

This passage sets up beautifully Lauren's adult worldiness alongside the childlike detachment and acceptance she has not yet lost, but never in this story do you get the sense that Lauren is cold or without feeling. In the way of most intelligent children, she struggles to maintain a calm surface while grappling with adult revelations. Her parents, by comparison, affect a sophistication that masks their immature selfishness and self-absorption.

The narrative follows the development of Lauren's friendship with another grown-up, Delphine, and the subsequent revelation of the facts surrounding Lauren's birth. In all this, you get a picture of Lauren as a child surrounded by adults who claim to be speaking and acting in her best interests but who in actuality are as self-absorbed as always. Lauren, who has been exposed to so many superficial adult activities, finally begins to internalize the fact that being an adult also means that what you do and say on the surface doesn't always match your true motivations.

These stories seemed, to me, to be populated not with cold, emotionally unavailable characters; quite the opposite, actually. In the stories I've mentioned, as well as "Tricks" and "Powers" (single-word titles are a motif in this collection), the characters seem emotionally unsophisticated (which is not the same as "simple"), as if they haven't learned to use their "feeling words" (to borrow a tongue-in-cheek phrase from my saucy sociologist-friend Katie).

One of the things I was hyper aware of throughout these stories is Munro's way of building her stories. She generally follows conventional linear narratives, but she also adds layer upon layer of detail, insights, and minor epiphanies. Like a painting in which the colours are added in layers, the full picture isn't revealed until the last brushstroke. (I don't know if that analogy makes sense to you, but it helped me, so I'm tossing it out there.)

As predictably excellent as this set of stories is, I have to mention that I still prefer Munro's previous collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. I mean, ideally you should read every single thing Munro has ever written, but if you only pick up one book, make it that one. The final story knocked my socks clean off my feet.

BOOKS: A Blogger's Blogger

Shhh... don't tell my good pal the Baco-Vegetarian this, but I've always been skeptical about writers who don't read. And by my own highly suspect and subjective reckoning, non-fiction doesn't count.

See, the thing is, the B-V is actually quite a good writer, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that he doesn't read real books. (Sorry. Should I have said "real" books?) It just doesn't seem... right, somehow. Which is why I'm always gratified to hear about writers whom I like who also happen to share my reading habits. I'm too old to have my assumptions challenged. It makes me cranky and irregular.

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby (#4)
Much as I love Nick Hornby (to the extent that I even tried to read Fever Pitch, despite the fact that it's (a) non-fiction, and (b) about soccer football), I have to admit that this collection of Hornby's essays from The Believer blew right past me when it was released. Thankfully, I'm a regular visitor to Exxie's Book Lounge, where I happened across her excellent review, which immediately convinced me to rush out and pick this up.

The book jacket describes this as "a hilarious and true account of one man's struggle with the monthly tide of the books he's bought and the books he's been meaning to read." If that doesn't convince you to read it, might I add that in Anastasia Krupnik fashion, Hornby prefaces each month's essay with lists: one of the books he bought that month, and one of the books he read. Aha. I got you with the lists, didn't I?

Not only is this collection ripe with eclectic book recommendations and the types of acute observations about reading that made my heart sigh, "Finally, someone understands me," Hornby's writing is, in and of itself, delightful. You've heard the phrase "a writer's writer." Hornby is a blogger's blogger. His essays are wonderfully circuitous, rambling, self-referential, and peppered with fantastic insights, wicked turns of phrase, and moments of surprising beauty... in short, as bloggy as all get-out.

An example? Here you go:

Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. The Magic Flute v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. The Last Supper v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on points. See? I mean, I don't know how scientific this is, but it feels like the novels are walking it. You might get the occasional exception -- Blonde on Blonde might mash up The Old Curiosity Shop, say, and I wouldn't give much for Pale Fire's chances against Citizen Kane. And every now and then you'd get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future III might land a lucky punch on Rabbit, Run; but I'm still backing literature twenty-nine times out of thirty.

If I dare to disagree with anything, it's only to quibble and mention that I'd back Pale Fire against Citizen "Overrated" Kane any day of the week. (Am I trying to start trouble here? Mayhap I am.)

Do I recommend this collection? Most heartily. If circuitous, rambling, self-referential talk about reading is what you dig -- and I can only assume you do, because you're here -- I give 1:1 odds you'll love this book.