ETC: Fun with Nipples

I've been feeling kind of guilty about my dearth of posting at the Bored Housewives Network lately, so I've finally written something substantial over there. Or if not substantial, at least long.

When I posted this picture a couple of days ago, Libby wondered in the comments section if I have any weaning plans. Of course, gracious soul that she is, she prefaced her question with the hope that it wasn't too personal for the internet. And maybe it would be a personal question for some people. But since I've written in the past about my firsthand experiences with post-partum incontinence and baby constipation, it's obviously not too personal a question for me. Also, Sam long ago made my boobs part of the public record without asking my permission, so why stop now?

Go here to read the rest.

WORDS: Brrrraaawk! Polly Wants a Copy of The Elements of Style!

I was first drawn in to this article in The Globe and Mail, not just because it's about grammar, but because it's about teaching grammar to birds, which is kind of nifty, if you ask me. I mean, it's not teaching an orangutan to smoke a cigar while reading a tricycle, but it's a pretty cool party trick nonetheless.

According to journalist Seth Borenstein:

While many animals can roar, sing, grunt or otherwise make noise, linguists have contended for years that the key to distinguishing language skills goes back to our elementary school teachers and basic grammar.

But don't get too cocky, Big Head. We're not so special after all. Apparently, researchers (with way too much free time and government grants than are good for them, I'd reckon) have taught common starlings to recognize "the most basic of grammar in their own bird language." He doesn't say if the birds then go on to learn to recite bad poetry or write in their diaries, but I imagine it's inevitable. I'm not one to advocate keeping birds in captivity, but I really hope they don't release those poetry-reciting ones into the wild. Or into my neighbourhood, anyway.

Have you ever noticed, though, how an article about something like spelling or grammar or whatever suddenly makes you hyper-aware of spelling and grammer grammar and whatever, particularly as evidenced in the article you're reading? Like, in just my first pass-through of this piece, I noticed a few glaring... well, I don't know if I'd call them mistakes, exactly. Let's just call them "things I wouldn't write if I were a SCIENCE journalist purportedly getting PAID for what I write."*

1.

Sentences that contain an explanatory clause are something that humans can recognize, but not animals, researchers figured.

Last time I checked, weren't human beings also animals? Sorry to sound peevish, but this is a minor beef of mine. (Get it? Beef? Not really? Okay.)

2.

To put the trained starlings' grammar skills in perspective, Mr. Gentner said they do not match up to either of his sons, ages 2 and 9 months.

Ages 2 and 9 months? Two months and 9 months? Two years and 9 months? Sloppy, sloppy. But I'm sure it's better than a trained starling could do.

3.

But starlings may be more apt vocalizers, however, and have a better grasp of language than non-human primates.

Mr. Borenstein. You can have the "but" or you can have the "however." You cannot have both, sir.

Yes, I'm being nitpicky. It's what I DO.


*Note how this sentence craftily absolves me from adhering to my own high standards. Well played, if I say so myself.

ETC: What a Coinkidink

No new post today. By a sheer coincidence that boggles the imagination, yesterday I was given two separate passels of fabulous books AND our new king-sized bed was delivered and set up.

That's right, good people of the internet, I said KING-SIZED BED. You might wonder why two small-to-average-sized grown-ups need such a huge bed in their tiny bedroom. What can I say? We're large in spirit.

At any rate... new books. A giant bed with gorgeous new bedding. What would you do if you were me? That's right. Go to bed with the books and don't come out till they're all read. Somebody get me my chamberpot.

Okay. You wore me down. Maybe I'll write a little bit more after all.

The word "coincidence" got me thinking of a true story that was told to me by another mom I run into in the 'hood from time to time. I don't want to say her real name, but she's named for a tree, which is germane to the story, so I'll call her "Laurel." Like many people I run into in British Columbia, Laurel is of second-generation hippie stock. She was born on one of BC's Gulf Islands, outdoors beneath a laurel tree, for which she was named.

Laurel told me that she has a stepbrother who is an antique book dealer. He regularly makes the rounds of junk shops and estate sales, looking to pick up rare and antique finds. He frequently finds odd objects tucked inside books, so when a letter fell out of a book he was leafing through, he wasn't surprised, but picked it up and read it. Imagine his shocked surprise when he found himself reading a letter from a then-teenaged hippie chick describing an amazing birth she'd just witnessed. You guessed it: Laurel's.

Is your mind blown? Mine sure is.

I tried to imagine how I'd feel upon being presented with such an artifact, but given the fact that I had a totally ordinary hospital birth and was given one of the most dirt-common names of 1970, I don't think I'd even recognize that such a letter was about me and not eight bajillion other baby girls. Thanks a LOT, mom.

BOOKS: Sopor-iffic!

For the past week, lucky young Master Sam has been showered with birthday gifts from his many friends and admirers, several of whom gave him lovely books that we already cherish dearly. I won't list them all here, but I want to call attention to one in particular, which was sent to him by Wing Chun and Glark, who are always the souls of generosity.

Step 1: The gift arrives in the mail. Much excitement ensues. Sam guesses (incorrectly, we later learn) that it is a pony.

Step 2: Rusty performs his customary leap-into-the-photo gambit. This is not so much a step as a tradition. Not one to be upstaged by his father, Sam rallies with an impressively goofy mug for the camera.

Step 3: Sam taste tests the wrapping paper. Yes, it's the good stuff.

Step 4: A seasoned gift unwrapping veteran, Sam promptly and with Teutonic efficiency dispatches with the gift wrap.

Step 5: The book has an IMMEDIATE EFFECT. Do other parents know about the nigh-magical soporific properties of Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book? How do I buy shares in this?

BOOKS: "For who likes to be immersed in deep reading"

Am I the only person having big-time problems with #%@&*! Blogger this morning? I have half a mind to go and demand my money back.

Anyway. A follow-up from one of my posts last week:

Miriam Teows's A Complicated Kindness was the last book standing at the end of CBC's Canada Reads challenge. Teows's novel, about a teenaged Mennonite girl living in the prairies, was championed by John K. Samson from The Weakerthans in a week-long panel debate that also included lawyer/politico/writer Maureen McTeer and Scott Thompson from The Kids in the Hall.

A Complicated Kindness is much more contemporary and edgy and sympathetic than my brief description makes it sound. Don't think "updated Little House on the Prairies." Think "somewhat more uplifting Cruddy."

My understanding is that the next step after announcing the winner is enlisting Canadians across the land to read the book. But really, I think people everywhere should read this novel. I don't often tout books as having something for everyone, but I really think almost anyone can get something out of this story. It's that good.

In other news, I got two emails within an hour of each other -- from tuckova and Kim -- pointing me to this crazy thing. You recall that I have a thing for chairs, as well as a thing for bookshelves? Those nutty kids over at the Italian design firm Nobody & Co. have brought these two great flavours together in the Bibliochaise.
I know it's totally 1998 to point out cute other-language-to-English translated web copy, but according to the Nobody & Co. website:

The Bibliochaise is an armchairlibrary for who likes to be immersed in deep reading.

Apparently it can shelve five linear metres worth of books, which is pretty impressive, but I'm curious as to how comfortable it is. It looks a tad... cubey. And there doesn't seem to be much padding inside the arms. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the aesthetics of it. Maybe a teak or mahogany or even birch veneer, rather than black? And something other than orange vinyl for the upholstery. I'm thinking that mismatched books don't really work with this chair, either. Much as I hate the matchy-matchy approach to organizing books, sometimes it works.

Hm. This chair is starting to seem like a lot of work. What do you guys think? Yay or nay?

BOOKS: Top 50 Movie Adaptations

Heeeeey, I think the folks at The Guardian are on to us book people. They know we're total freaks for lists, which is why they've published yet another one: Top 50 Movie Adaptations.

Organized by The Guardian, a panel of experts (though the article doesn't say who these experts are or what their qualifications are) came up with the longlist below, which will be voted on by the general public. The winner will be revealed at the Guardian Hay literary festival at the end of May.

Here's what the so-called experts came up with:

1984
Alice in Wonderland
American Psycho
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Brighton Rock
Catch 22
Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
A Clockwork Orange
Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
The Day of the Triffids
Devil in a Blue Dress
Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
Doctor Zhivago
Empire of the Sun
The English Patient
Fight Club
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Get Shorty
The Godfather
Goldfinger
Goodfellas
Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Jaws
The Jungle Book
A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
LA Confidential
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Lolita
Lord of the Flies
The Maltese Falcon
Oliver Twist
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Orlando
The Outsiders
Pride and Prejudice
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The Railway Children
Rebecca
The Remains of the Day
Schindler's Ark (aka Schindler's List)
Sin City
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The Talented Mr Ripley
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
To Kill a Mockingbird
Trainspotting
The Vanishing
Watership Down

This list caused me a few surprises. No Howard's End? No Lord of the Rings? And I didn't know The Railway Children (written by one of my favourite children's authors, E. Nesbit) had been made into a movie. Can any of you tip me off as to its quality? And speaking of quality... er, Get Shorty? It made the cut?

According to The Guardian's film editor, who was on the panel, "There was some vigorous debate." What? Book nerds and movie nerds getting pissy about a "best of" list? You don't say.

The old-timers among you may remember back when I published my own list of the best film adaptations last November. Let's dig into the vault and see how my (much shorter) list compares to The Guardian's.

Howard's End - The "experts" passed it over. Boo!
Jaws - Made the list.
The Shining - Denied!
Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory - Again denied! (I'm assuming that when the list refers to Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, they mean the recent version starring Johnny Depp.)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Guess what? Denied!
Clueless - You guessed it. Denied.

I added Adaptation in the comments section as soon as I realized that I'd foolishly forgotten it, not that it matters. It didn't make The Guardian's list, either (though that might have more to do with the fact that it's based on a non-fiction book, and therefore doesn't fit the criteria for the selection committee).

So only one of my picks made the list. Tell me, book and movie nerds: who sucks? Me? Or The Guardian? Or possibly both, but then where does that leave us?

(Mondo ups to Karen for the link. She knows everything before I do, which is why I love visiting her site every day. If you love books, music, gadgets, food, lists, and funny stories, I recommend you do the same. No, no, no... thank me later.)

BOOKS: So Long As You Don't Move Your Lips...

I was taking the SkyTrain (it's like a subway, but above ground... a superway?) yesterday, and I noticed the woman sitting opposite me, who was reading Nick Hornby's About a Boy. Weird coincidence: I had JUST been thinking that I need to get my hands on a copy of About a Boy, because my copy's gone missing and I've been thinking for months about re-reading it.

That aside, sneakily watching this woman read her book made me realize that I really like watching people read. Have you ever done this? Stared out of the corner of your eye at your partner, a friend, or a total stranger while they're lost in a book? It's not like staring at people who are themselves staring off into space with slack, vacant expressions. People who read have a variety of amazingly subtle facial expressions that are a happy wonder to observe.

Take the woman on the SkyTrain. She had just the slightest frown, which modulated slightly from page to page. It's not that she seemed, well, not bright or anything. (Anyone who likes Nick Hornby gets the benefit of the doubt in my book.) It was more of a sympathetic frown, the kind you find yourself wearing when someone is telling you their troubles and you're feeling their pain.

I got to thinking about the times I've sneaked peeks -- or downright stared, if I was sure I wouldn't get caught -- at the people I know while they read.

Rusty, for example, has a very forthright, relaxed gaze when he's getting a book into him. He's taking in the story or the information on the pages, but he hasn't decided if he's buying it yet or not.

Sam, on the other hand, not only furrows his brow, as if fully doubting the veracity of his board books ("A long time ago there were dinosaurs?" We'll see about that), he also purses his lips much like Arnold from Diff'rent Strokes. (Whatchoo talking about, dinosaurs?)

The Fabulous Suzi is very similar to Rusty. She's open-minded as all get-out, but she didn't just fall off the pumpkin truck. She'll decide when it's over if the book was good or not, and you can bet she'll be able to give you a concise, nuanced opinion about it.

Our housemate The Don recently showed us a video he's working on about his travels through Thailand and Cambodia. At one point he hooked up with our good friends Ali and Little D, and he shot some footage of them reading on a beach. Oblivious to the camera, Ali gives her book the same look she gives her friends when you tell her a story: relaxed and slightly credulous, but also anticipatory and encouraging, as if she's giving the book little cues that it's doing a good job so far and to keep up the great work. Little D, on the other hand, is frowning intently and unblinkingly at the pages. I can't know what she's thinking, but I imagine that something powerful has just happened, and empathetic soul that she is, Little D is trying to assimilate this.

I've never caught some of my friends reading, but I like to guess how they'd look. Rizzo I envision with the tip of her tongue sticking slightly out of her closed mouth... not that she needs to do this to concentrate but because she's possibly the cutest chick alive and I think that, on her, this facial expression could shut things down over at Cute Overload if they let humans compete. And I imagine Suepy staring with powerful intent at a book, absorbing each page's contents in huge swathes with her crazy eidetic memory.

I have no idea how I look when I read. I've been told that I have no facial expression whatsoever, that my eyes just scan left to right, left to right, left to right, while the rest of my face is totally immobilized. I'm curious to see what that looks like, but I'm even more curious about how a human face can refrain from reacting when so many thoughts are swirling around behind its eyes. As someone once said, people are weird.

Happy Sam-iversary!

Someone told me recently that first birthday parties are more for the moms than they are for the babies.

My response? "Hell, yeah!"

I think of today not so much as young Master Sam's birthday as the anniversary of the day I squeezed a head the size of a canteloupe through my lady bits, coinciding with the exact moment I stopped being the size of a Hyundai. If you don't see anything to celebrate in that, go away.

Okay, I'm being facetious (sort of). It's not all about me. I really am amazed and dazzled and generally mindblown about the fact that this little person, who didn't even exist such a short time ago, has already been with us for a whole year. You know how you always hear parents saying, "It goes by so fast"? That's because it's disturbingly true. And I'd be lying if I said that doesn't make me a little bit sad.

But that's the trade-off, right? Every day I say goodbye to the Sam that existed yesterday, because that kid is gone, vamoose, outtahere, and he's replaced by the Sam of today with his handfuls of charming new ways and habits, which I know I'll be saying goodbye to tomorrow. To be a parent is to exist in a perpetual state of anticipatory nostalgia, and if you don't think I get a little choked up every time I think about it, you are wrong, mon frere.

At the same time, though, getting to live with Sam has taught me to live in the present the way nothing else could have. I'm a planner by temperament, and while this trait is certainly useful in several aspects of parenting, its tendency to make you live primarily in the future is not helpful when you're trying to roll with the day-to-day lifestyle of the stay-at-home-mom. For that you've got to roll with the punches, because plans? Babies mock your plans. Your plans exist solely for the purpose of being mangled by derisive babies. You may as well just pass your Palm Pilot to your newborn and tell him to keep it in his diaper for all the good your lists and plans are. It's taken me a while to learn this, but that lesson has finally sunk in. It's humbling and all, but dude, after this past year I'm so humble I could probably make one of those convincing Oscar speeches that make you believe, "Hey, I think she really IS giving her parents and God all the credit."

Hmm. Maybe this entry is all about me after all. Well, Sam can get his own blog. They're free, so it's not like he can pull out his old "But I'm a baby. I don't have any money" excuse, because let me tell you, that one's getting pretty old.

I had this idea that I'd write a couple of lists of how things have changed since Sam came along, starting with this partial list of things that I now consider "occasional lifestyle treats" rather than "cornerstones of my existence" (note the importance of semantics in making these distinctions):

• sleeping for more than three hours in a row
• sleeping in, period
• eating a hot meal
• combing my hair more than once a day
• wearing an outfit completely free of snot, drool, vomit, pee, or poop
  
• going out after 7:30 pm

All those activities? Highly overrated. It's amazingly easy to get by without them as long as you commit yourself to thinking of them as frills rather than necessities. And the trade-off? Well, look at this list of things I've done more of in the past year than ever before in my life:

• listening to music
• drinking coffee
• dancing
• kissing
• hugging
• being covered with as many as five different bodily fluids at the same time
• singing shamelessly loudly in public
• talking to strangers
• talking to really weird strangers
• drinking more coffee
• worrying
• overcoming worries
• bonding with super-cool women
• laughing
• crying
• drinking still more coffee
• stopping
• smelling the roses
• putting myself second
• nourishing human life
• being the absolute epicentre of someone else's existence

It's a no-brainer, really. And did you get a load of all the music and dancing and kissing and hugging? Other parents won't tell you this because they want to hog all the action for themselves, but having a baby is EXACTLY like being at a rave. And babies look hella cute in fun-fur pants and Cat-in-the-Hat hats. The look is totally 1994, but since babies weren't born back then, they just call it retro and breezily go about their business.

Happy birthday, Sam. I promise I'm fully here in the moment of being with one-year-old you, but someday you're going to be seven or fifteen or twenty-eight or forty-two, and I'm going to be there telling you about what an awesome little person you were as a one year old. And I have to admit, that sounds pretty nice, too. See you then.

BOOKS: Canada Reads

I know it's not cool or anything, but I'm frequently proud to be a Canadian. Oh, maybe I have my moments of national shame... say when names like "Celine Dion" and "Cirque du Soleil" get bandied about, or when those dumbass "I am Canadian" commercials pop up on my TV, but that's part of being a citizen of this fine land, so I can suck it up.

No, my moments of chest-puffery come when I learn about things like the fact that BC men have the longest life expectancy in the world. (In your face, Japan. Boo-ya!) Or that Canadian parents are entitled to a full year of maternity leave.

And of course I'm proud of our national public broadcaster, the CBC (though Rusty would appreciate it if you'd call it The Ceeb, an affectionate nickname he's been pushing for years), when they run charming, ambitious radio programs such as Canada Reads, which airs every day this week.

Remember all those One Book community reading projects that were all the rage a few years book, when it seemed that all of North America had been electrified and Oprah-fied by the idea of book groups? Ranging from city-wide to state-wide to nation-wide, these diverse projects had one common goal: to get massive groups of people reading and talking about the same book.

Many of these projects have, sadly, fallen by the wayside. (Is there anything sadder than seeing an ambitious, idealistic project's website with the timestamp "Last updated on August 2, 2002"? Maybe a basket of three-legged kittens, but not much else.) But many projects have survived, and one of the lasting (so far) legacies of the One Book initiative is Canada Reads, which has aired every year since 2002.

Promoted as "Five books. Five panelists. Five feisty debates." Canada Reads is a week-long "battle of the books" pitting five Canadian celebrities against one another in a series of debates, wherein each one promotes their pick for the Canadian fiction title that all Canadians should read. It's sort of like literary Survivor, as each episode a book gets kicked off.

This year's panelists include The Weakerthans' John K. Samson (plugging A Complicated Kindness), author/lawyer Maureen McTeer (Deafening), filmmaker/writer Nelofer Pazira (Three Day Road), author Susan Musgrave (Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets), and Kids in the Hall alumni Scott Thompson (Cocksure).

The panel is moderated by Bill Richardson, and honestly? I don't know what the Ceeb would do without Bill. He is just totally fucking awesome, and programs like this just highlight his awesomeness.

Canada Reads actually started yesterday (I knew that string around my finger was there for a reason), but it's not too late to get on board for the debates. They run every day till this Friday, April 21st on CBC Radio One at 11:30 am and 7:30 pm. Readings from the books air this week on Between the Covers at 10:40 pm.

Much as I'd love to leave you with this rosy, maple-scented vision of millions of Canadians reading together in perfect harmony, I have to mention that our country still has lots of room for improvement. While our literacy rate is widely touted as being 97 percent, in actuality 22 percent of adult Canadians have serious problems dealing with printed materials. Taking literacy for granted as I do, I tend to forget that reading isn't just this fun, self-indulgent, escapist activity I indulge in for hours every week. Literacy rates are tied to unemployment, income, population growth, and the treatment of women and children. Personally and globally, we literally can't afford not to read.

Do I think that programs such as Canada Reads will have a direct effect on these problems? I'd love to say yes, and perhaps an idealistic part of me believes this is so. My more realistic side tells me that the audience that will tune in to watch Maureen McTeer duke it out with Scott Thompson are probably people much like me: educated, middle-class, and semi-privileged.

But any program that celebrates reading is a good thing, if only to keep the flame of the idea burning... and perhaps over the long run to illuminate the importance of books and reading in our country and around the world.

BOOKS: An Outsider, a Schlub, and an Arrogant Twerp

So this post is sort of an exercise in the circuitous logic of reading choices, something I've become hyper aware of ever since reading Nick Hornby's most excellent must-read for book lovers, The Polysyllabic Spree.

The Complete Stories of Truman Capote (#9)
I'm fighting the compulsion to start by reminding you all that I've been loving the Capote since well before all the film and Oscar hype (and I guess that was my not-so-subtle way of getting that point in there after all: I'm nothing if not transparent, after all).

I retreated to this collection of short stories after declaring a temporary hiatus from Middlemarch, which I was loving until I started to notice eerie parallels to events in my own life. Despite the fact that Capote has a disturbing ability to leave tiny paper cuts all over my psyche (or perhaps because of it, because I do have literary masochistic tendencies), I love these stories so, not least because the introduction primes me by stating that, as a young man in the early forties, Capote was fired from his copyboy job at The New Yorker for inadvertently offending Robert Frost. The introduction never explains why, so I leave this tantalizing mystery with you.

The stories, twenty in all, are arranged chronologically, which makes for an interesting study in Capote's path as a writer. His storytelling (predictably) improves as you move through these tales, but from the start he has an amazing gift for strange insights and turns of phrase that reach out to you from the page and insist that you stop and give them a think. (Orwell would be suitably impressed.)

You can also see Capote experimenting with different forms, particularly with his interesting -- if not always one hundred percent successful -- Twilight Zone-esque supernatural tales such as "Miriam" and "The Headless Hawk."

I've mentioned before, but it bears repeating, that Capote's storytelling reaches its zenith with the autobiographical, moving, and deceptively simple story "A Christmas Memory." This collection also houses a similar tale from Capote's childhood, "The Thanksgiving Visitor."

As pure fiction goes, my favourite story in this book is "Mojave," a story-within-a-story about the complex relationship between a woman and her husband.

As different as all these stories are from one another, what they share is Capote's singular vision. As a lifelong outsider, he writes with an outsider's unique perspective about other outsiders.

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson (#10)
Much as I love Capote's writing, it tends to leave me feeling a bit lonely and hollow inside, so as an antidote I turned to this collection of anecdotes from Bill Bryson's travels around his adopted homeland of Great Britain.

If you're not familiar with Bryson's modus operendi, what he likes to do is travel around a place -- the UK, Europe, Australia, the Appalachian Trail -- and then write the shit out of it in a funny, bloggish kind of way.

Funny thing: if you were to ask me who my favourite travel writer is, I don't think I would ever have named Bryson. Tim Cahill, Randy Wayne White, Jon Krakeuer... these are names that leap to mind. But when I was perusing the travel section of my bookcase, I found that I own more of Bryson's books than any other writer. So I guess he is one of my favourites after all. Who knew!

In Notes from a Small Island, Bryson comments on one of the aspects of the British national character he finds most endearing: the Brits' ability to take delight in the smallest things. Throughout his recollections of his travels, it's pretty obvious Bryson has absorbed this characteristic as well. At one point, he rhapsodizes about his fairly generic hotel room:

Nowadays you get a color TV, coffee-making tray with a little packet of modestly tasty biscuits, a private bath with fluffy towels, a little basket of cotton wool balls in rainbow colors, and an array of sachets or little plastic bottles of shampoo, bath gel, and moisturizing lotion. My room even had an adequate bedside light and two soft pillows. I was very happy.

After typing that passage, I was about to wax affectionately mocking. I mean, cotton wool balls? Soft pillows? Golly. But then I hit the rewind button and remembered my own reaction to the hotel room Rusty, Sam and I stayed in last week: Ooh, look at the size of this bed! Yay, extra towels! This is the best shower EVER!

Once again humbled by mine own cursed memory. Drat.

I think what I like about Bryson's writing is its accessibility. He's basically a schlub -- just like you or me -- with a passport. He doesn't have grand adventures, though he does have a close call with a rooming house proprietress whom he inadvertantly pisses off by leaving behind the broiled tomato that comes with his "full English breakfast" two days in a row. Imagine!

But he tells his stories entertainingly, unpretentiously, and with the type of self deprecation I'm a total sucker for and which will almost certainly guarantee that I continue to buy every book he writes.

The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis (#11)
Now, call this an odd little coincidence, but in Notes, Bill Bryson laments the terrible urban planning that has conspired to ruin huge sections of Oxford. And where is the hometown of the hero (if "hero" is the word I want) of my next book? Yes, Oxford. I'll wait for you to reassemble your totally blown mind before I continue.

I never used to think it was particularly noteworthy that I have a fondness for coming-of-age novels about precocious, annoying, hypocritical young men until I read Carrie's post about The Guardian's survey that found men only read books by men, whereas women read books written by both genders. I certainly fall predictably into the female camp, and I have a particularly powerful affection for Holden Caulfield, Nick Twisp, Adrian Mole, and of course, The Rachel Papers' cheerfully bratty nineteen-year-old protagonist Charles Highway.

Charles has one goal before he turns twenty: to sleep with an Older Woman. He sets his sites on the elusive Rachel, who is as barely two-dimensional as you might imagine (which I think is deliberate on Amis's part). The novel documents Charles's first-person account of the detailed strategems he employs to achieve his mission.

If I were younger when I first encountered this novel, I almost certainly would have disliked Charles Highway. He's pretentious. He's sanctimonious. He's sexist. He's disconcertingly frank about his various bodily functions. But I just can't dislike Charles, and in fact I find him rather charming and endearingly vulnerable. And unlike his overly earnest counterpart Holden Caulfield, Charles is pretty funny. He's not always nice, but he's definitely funny.

What Amis does so brilliantly with this arrogant little twerp is subtly reveal his innocence, which masks as wordliness, and his naivete, which masks as cunning. At the end of the day, Charles is a boy with a child's fears and anxieties about his body, his mortality, his future, and his parents' relationship. I challenge you to read this novel and still dislike Charles at the end, try as you might.

You'd think that, given how much I like this book, I'd have read more of Amis's writing, but no, I haven't. I started to read London Fields once, but it was a bit of a downer at the start -- which I didn't need in my life at the time -- so I put it down. If anyone can knowledgeably suggest an Amis novel along the lines of The Rachel Papers, please, please do.

WEB: What a Tool

I don't know if it's the effect of spring, or just this ultra-long weekend, but I'm having a killer time trying to fight the urge to acquire more books. To quote Bill Murray in What About Bob, I WANT! I NEED!

So while I'm not saying I WILL be getting my mitts on more books, I'm just saying I've been poking around looking for recommendations. Might I just add that you people added fuel to the fire with all your in-flight reading recommendations. I hope you're happy.

Say you're hunting for new books. Sure, you can always go to Amazon and use their "People who liked this book also liked..." feature. It's solid. It works. No complaints here. But why not mix it up a little bit from time to time? Get a fresh perspective. Keep it real. Which is why I made a little "Whee!" noise (try it! Whee! It's fun!) when I stumbled across the Literature Map. In a nutshell, you enter the name of an author you like, and you're presented with a, well, a map with the author's name in the middle, surrounded by the names of other authors, all of which float and cavort in a rather fetching manner. The names closest to the name of the author you entered (er, you know what I mean when I say "the author you entered," right?) are recommended.

Hm. That description was a bit laboured, wasn't it? Perhaps you should just go and try it for yourself. I tested the system with one of my favourite contemporary writers, Alice Munro, and the map told me I need to read books by Elizabeth Hay, Ali Smith, Jane Urquhart, and Eudora Welty. I haven't read ANY of these authors, so goody for me. Now they're on the list. Which is roughly the size of a phone book these days.

A similar-but-different tool is LibraryThing, which lets you feed into the system rather than just using it. It allows you to catalogue some or all of your own library, and then search for people (and their books) who have the same books as you. It's sort of like Friendster for your books, except that it's not riddled with bugs. (Ooh, snap! I hope that stung, Friendster!) Because books need buddies, too.

Of course, if you're just ass-lazy and can't be bothered with all the tools and the typing and the hitting the "submit" button and the whatnot, I guess you could just go read a bunch of lists of books to read. Warning: There are a LOT of different lists here, from the American Library Association's lists of notable books for children and adults to the Banned Books Online directory of books banned in the US.

Prepare to be overwhelmed. But you've got three days to recover, so I think you can do it. My money's on you, kid.

ARGH!

No new post today. Bad nap schedule... bad weather... and an, er, interesting work-related meeting. All have colluded against me.

I'll be back -- large, in charge, and in post-erific form -- tomorrow. Believe it or not (and this may reassure those of you who have been kind enough to email me with your concern that my book tally for 2006 seems to be permanently stalled at #8, bless your hearts), I've read a passel of actual books that I want to talk about. As my online and offline pal Violet Chrome would say, "Whoop!"

WEB: Shout-Out Wednesday

Looking around this sector of the blogosphere, I've realized there's a whole lotta stuff going on. Spring is in the air. Or something. So let's get busy.

Armada!
Dave over at Touch You Last is launching an online literary journal called Armada! [exclamation point mine for reasons I'll explain in a minute] and he's just posted a call for submissions. If you're of a literary bent (and I'd be shocked if you weren't), check it out here.

If you're a Kids in the Hall fan, you may remember a recurring sketch about a garage band that starts out with the name Armada! and then as the teenaged egos make themselves apparent the band name evolves into "Rod Torfleson's Armada! featuring Herman Menderchuck." I've already told Dave this, so it will come as no surprise to him when I say that I can't think of his literary journal without mentally renaming it "Dave's Armada! featuring Doppelganger."

Anyway, even if you don't have a hankering to see your fine words in print, you should still visit Dave's site. He's funny.

Try Harder
Carrie over at Try Harder is running an informal survey in response to a casual study done by The Guardian which revealed (in Carrie's words) that "men are only touched by boring, crappy books written by other men. Women, on the other hand, like a wider variety of mostly boring books, pooped out by both genders." She invites the gentlemen citizens of Tryharderland (a nation always open to immigration) to chime in here.

Whether you're male or female, you should also visit Carrie's fine site and read her back-dated entries. Or she'll get you.

Just a Little Guy: Pancakes or Waffles
It's this week's Pancakes or Waffles face-off over at Just a Little Guy. Baby raccoon versus sloth in a box. You decide. So far, I think the sloth has a slight edge, but I'm still trying to make up my mind. Decisions, decisions.

Cap'n Ganch's First Sentence Contest
I may be in the doghouse with Cap'n Ganch because I totally managed to miss his shout-out to me till just now, but maybe I can make it up to him by plugging his contest. (Hopefully, the contest is still running. I'm really bad at noticing deadlines.) The Cap'n is planning to write himself a short story, and he's counting on us, citizens of the interweb, to deliver him the perfect original first line. So git over there and do it. I'd try myself, but I choke under pressure.

White Trasherati Wants to Know
And my fellow Bored Housewife White Trasherati wants to know what kind of tattoo you'd get and where you'd get it if you absolutely HAD to get a tattoo. Trasherati is a college instructor and this is an ice-breaking question she gets her new students to answer on the first day of class. This confirms the fact that Trasherati is cooler than every professor I ever had.

Tees and Love
As for my own little corner of the world, I haven't forgotten about the 50 Books t-shirt scheme. Thanks to everyone who emailed me to express interest. There were more of you than I expected, which is fantastic, so I think I'm going to proceed. I have to figure out logistics such as shipping costs, so it'll have to wait till after I've gotten trivial things like my taxes out of the way, but I'm hoping to get your tees in your hands and on your backs just in time for summer. Woo!

And I HAD totally forgotten about the Worst Date Ever contest, but I just remembered. (Also on my list of things to remember: buy ginkgo biloba supplements.) Since Jesus has been kind enough to give us the upcoming extra-long long weekend, I figure I'll use the time to harangue my poor housemate The Don into adjudicating. (The Don, if you're just reading this now, hi!) So I'll be announcing the lucky winner next week. Double-woo!

See? I told you things are busy. The internet moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it.

ETC: Five Things the TV Taught Me

We just flew in from Ontario and, boy, are my arms tired. (Badum-dum. Why, yes. I WILL be here all week.) Very little reading got done during the flight (and by "very little" I mean "none whatsover"); however, thanks to the magic of powerful satellites that are orbiting this great spaceship earth EVEN AS I WRITE THIS, I did have a chance to become familiar with a cross-section of afternoon TV offerings.

So I was watching Dr. Phil, something I've only done once before, and he was settling marital squabbles of the "I-want-a-jeep / Well-I-want-an-SUV" variety. It was pretty funny, actually. Couple after couple would come out, each partner would present his or her case, and then Dr. Phil would state who was right. I mean, how satisfying is that? Nowithstanding the fact that, as I understand it, real marriage counsellors aren't supposed to pick sides, who ever said Dr. Phil was a real counsellor of any ilk? Isn't the dude just an ordinary doctor who's written a bunch of self-help books?

So given that we're able to conveniently set aside all expectations of professional ethics, I will totally admit that I find the idea of this self-professed marriage "counsellor" just wading into a debate and stating "You are right and you are not" to be AWESOME. Because isn't that what we all secretly crave? For some random stranger to come along and tell our significant other that they're just WRONG, goddammit?

But wait a second... forget what I said about professional ethics and non-professional counsellors, because when I flipped a few channels down the dial whom did I find but Ms. Tyra Banks interviewing young women who suffer from anorexia and bulimia. Now, I certainly don't profess to have anything but a layperson's understanding of matters psychological, but isn't there something... hm... let's call it FUCKED UP... about the fact that on one station we have a medical doctor whose banal advice is exceeded only by the banality of its recipients, and on another station we have a former swimsuit model counselling people who suffer from a disease that has one of the highest mortality rates of any form of mental illness? I mean, if Dr. Phil is going to really help anyone, maybe his efforts would best be spent on young women who've suffered years of mental and physical abuse at their own hands. Of course, fifteen-second platitudes don't usually help people with powerful mental disorders, so maybe I can understand why Dr. Phil keeps anorexics and bulimics at arm's length.

I watched as much of Tyra and Phil as I could take, and then soothed myself with a hit of Sesame Street. Nothing to complain about there, other than this: has Ernie always been such a dink? I've never been a huge Ernie fan: I've always thought his obtuseness and seemingly laid-back demeanor were a particularly virulent form of passive-aggressiveness. I mean, what was UP with that time he ate all the licorice and drank all the grape juice under the guise of making the portions the same size? This time, he and Bert were supposed to be taking turns with their respective activities -- playing drums and reading a book -- but OF COURSE Ernie was calling the shots and only letting Bert read like one sentence before belting away with his crappy drum solos. Why does Bert put up with this crap?

Before I forget, I just wanted to mention that Honey, We're Killing the Kids is one of the absolute worst TV show titles I've ever heard. Did the parents know the show was going to be called that when they agreed to participate? Did the kids? It makes my heart sad.

On the other hand, I've discovered that I have a seemingly limitless ability to watch back-to-back-to-back episodes of A Baby Story and get choked up each time a fresh, gooey new baby is placed on its mom's tummy. I need to learn to check my compulsion to yell "Just get the epidural!" at the TV screen, though. At least when I'm in public.

I also watched about a gazillion trailers for Flightplan, which was playing on the airline equivalent of Pay-Per-View, and I went from not caring one iota about it to having a burning need to find out what happens to Jodie Foster's daughter. This happens to me all the time. Curse you, all-we-have-is-this-suspenseful-kid-related-hook filmmakers! (I'm looking at you, you bastards behind The Forgotten! I'll never get those two hours of my life back!)

So can someone help me out and just tell me how Flightplan ends? Trust me, you're not ruining it for me because I have no plans to ever rent it. Jodie "Now That's What I Call Overcooked Ham!" Foster has had her chance with Nell. And then again with Contact. I don't care how adorable she was in Freaky Friday or how many Ivy League degrees she has, nobody should be allowed to get away with such egregious scenery chewing. Jody, if nothing else, think of your lovely teeth!

BOOKS: The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

Hey, thanks to everyone who made in-flight reading suggestions after my last post. I ended up swinging through the not-bad-at-all bookstore at YVR and picking up Alexander McCall Smith's The 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom: The Portuguese Irregular Verbs Trilogy because look at me! I'm so cocksure of my ability to read on a plane with a baby that I can read a TRILOGY.

Except... it's been a full day and a half since I purchased the book and I still haven't even cracked the spine. Because not only did I grossly overestimate my ability to wrangle both young Master Sam* and a paperback on a plane, I also didn't take into consideration the falling-asleep-at-night-much-less-napping-in-a-strange-bed factor that has resulted in me having to accompany Sam on all his trips to dreamland. I'm not as choked about this as you might think because, much as I'd like to grab a little reading time, I rather like visiting dreamland. Have you tried this "sleep" thing? It's phenomenal. I may just make a habit of this.

I think I'm looking forward to getting into Pillars of Wisdom, despite the fact that I haven't heard anything about it, a fact that usually makes me wary. I've read some of the books in McCall's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and rather liked them, especially Morality for Beautiful Girls. But really I was suckered in to this book by the fact that the title contains the phrase "irregular verbs." Because I'm a nerd like that.

Also, the second book in the trilogy is entitled The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and what can I say? I have a (non-Freudian, I swear) thing about weiner dogs. There's a guy in my neighbourhood who drives a wheelchair and has THREE weiner dogs who all range out on their little leashes in front him, making the entire chair-and-dog arrangement look not unlike a pack of teeny sled dogs. Every time I see this guy and his pack of weiners, I fight the urge to yell "Mush!"

My friend the Baco-Vegetarian once told me that in Prague (or is it Berlin?) almost every home has a weiner dog, and that fact alone made me want to book a one-way ticket to Prague (or Berlin). You can count on one thing: when I do, I'll make sure I PACK A BOOK.


*To give Sam his due, he was a trooper throughout the flight. He had a little nap, ate some snacks, and generally larked about with nary a meltdown in sight. But still. He's eleven and a half months old. What was I thinking?

BOOKS: Boredom at 30,000 Feet

Ack! We're flying to Ontario early tomorrow to visit family for young Master Sam's first annual birthday tour and I just realized I HAVE NOTHING TO READ ON THE PLANE.

Middlemarch is on hold, as you know. I still haven't cracked The Areas of My Expertise, though I've peeked at it and it looks like good fun -- John Hodgman is sort of like David Foster Wallace if he maybe upped his Ritalin dose -- but I have a thing about hardcovers and travel. So Freakonomics is out, too. And I'm going to get to In Cold Blood soon, but I'm still screwing up the courage. And dagnabbit, I knew I shouldn't have blown my load and read that collection of Truman Capote's short stories (which I still haven't blogged about) because that would have been perfect in-flight reading, but at the time I needed an antidote to Middlemarch, so I took a calculated risk and hoped some other book would land in my lap before our departure date. And can you believe the luck? I went to my local used book store yesterday and it was CLOSED. What the eff?

Have you ever seen that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine and Puddy are flying back from Europe and they break up at the beginning of the flight because it drives her absolutely bonkers that he can just sit on a plane and stare at the back of the seat in front of him? That doesn't seem like an unreasonable reaction to me.

To illustrate this point, a brief exercise:

Enter, if you will, the mind of a person who can just sit and stare at a small expanse of fake tweed for five-plus hours.

Concentrate.

Concentrate.

Concentrate.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

No. You're right. I can't do it either. Because it's crazy, that's why. Long flights are part of god's plan for giving us the uninterrupted reading time we all so richly deserve, and if you don't believe that, well, I guess I'll just wish you a nice flight... INTO THE BOWELS OF HELL.

Which goes back to my original point: what am I supposed to read? I'm panicking here!

Okay, let's write off tomorrow's flight. It's too late. I'll watch airplane disaster movies in my head or count all the hairs on Sam's little bald head or something. But I'm taking the ol' laptop with me and our hotel is allegedly fully wired. I'll be posting as often as I can, and I'll be checking the comments. And I'll have access to the many, many fine book purveyors of southern Ontario. (You get that that was a joke, right?) Whoever saves my bacon with a solid book recommendation for the flight back... well, let me just say I'll make it worth your while.

WORDS: Semi-Colonoscopy

I'm finally on the mend and am working on some substantial, nourishing, life-affirming posts. In the meantime, here's this one.

I'm sure your time-frittering IM conversations are at least as entertaining as mine, and probably more so, but this is my blog, so this is what you get:

Rusty: editing question:
Rusty: "And the category seems to have a narrow focus indeed: they take the "dance" part of it very one-dimensionally, meaning there's no room at all for electronic music in a more general sense."
Rusty: what is wrong with this sentence? that colon looks threatening to me
Rusty: i don't care for it
Doppelganger: nope, the colon is good
Rusty: really?
Doppelganger: yep, because the part that follows is a continuation of the part before the colon
Rusty: fuck me
Rusty: i hate writing
Rusty: and editing
Rusty: and colons
Doppelganger: colons are tricky. i have to stop and think 'em through sometimes, too
Doppelganger: not like our trusty friend the semi-colon
Rusty: i hate that little bastard too
Doppelganger: whaaaaat?
Doppelganger: take that back
Rusty: no way
Doppelganger: don't ask me to pick sides between you and the semi-colon, dude
Rusty: i'll fuck that little asshole up if I ever get a chance
Doppelganger: what did the semi-colon ever do to you?
Rusty: I'd rather not say.
Doppelganger: except allow you to place two diametrically opposed ideas conveniently within the same sentence, that is
Rusty: LALALALALALA I can't hear you!
Doppelganger: well, the semi-colon has some choice things to say about you
Doppelganger: but he asked me not to tell
Rusty: well, screw him.
Doppelganger: it hurts the semi-colon when you say these things. the colon? he can take it. but the semi-colon is sensitive.