I was really excited when I first saw this gadget. But then I realized that it's not, in fact, a robotic device that not only holds your book but also turns the pages for you. It just holds your book open for you. Damn.
On the flip side (ha! flip... geddit?), this clever little notebook and pencil combo just about made my list-lovin' day. First, of course, it satisfies my nerd passion for listmaking, but then it goes one further by using GRAPH PAPER. Oh my stars. I think I've stumbled into some kind of anal retentive fantasy. The clever little pencil insert is almost overkill. Almost.
Of course, paper can't go everywhere, and you never know when 
you'll suddenly be seized by the compulsion to make a list of, oh, say, your favourite 1980s rock anthems featuring women on lead vocals.* Or a grocery list. I understand that some people like to write those, too. That's where this handy-dandy shower tablet comes in handy.
And since I'm having one of those kinds of days, I'm cranking the Random-O-Meter up to full just to show you this Stagger shelf by Brave Space.
Soooo pretty. Mama likes.
*Pat Benetar, "Love Is a Battlefield"
Joan Jett, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll"
Annie Lennox, "Sweet Dreams"
Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"
Heart, "What About Love"
Feel free to suggest more. My list would've been longer, but I didn't have a damned NOTEBOOK IN THE SHOWER.
I can't remember how I stumbled across this photo group on Flickr, but it's so neat I thought I'd pass it along. Called the Bookshelf Project, it's a collection of photos of book collections that the 900 members of the group have uploaded.
(Congratulations! If you clicked on the link above before reading further, you have arrived. You are a true book nerd. Your membership card and secret decoder ring will be arriving in the mail in 4-6 weeks.)
One thing I noticed after scanning through a few pages of thumbnails: when you look at photos of books en masse, it's not unlike flipping through a pornographic magazine really quickly. Your senses are flooded by a tidal wave of a single colour palette (though books tend to fall into the grey-blue area of the spectrum, while porn tends to be more on the, er, "peachy" side), and there's a strange rush coupled with a kind of Zen peace that comes from being inundated by an almost kaleidoscopic barrage of repeating images.
No, I'm not high right now. I swear.
Speaking of which, I haven't even begun to view all 1500+ pictures, but of the ones I've seen so far, this (uploaded by a member called etara) is definitely my favourite:
Whoa, dude. I think somebody spiked the punch.
I don't know where this picture was taken, and there's no information on the page. When I tried to do a search, the keywords "big-ass spiral tower thingy of books" didn't yield results, strangely enough. If anyone could enlighten me before this drives me NUTS, I'd appreciate it.
Mood: Moderately chipper
Hunger level: Satiated
Number of cleanse-related complaints: None
Reason for above: Beverage-induced cheating, in the form of one glass of wine (last night) and one mocha (this morning)
Outlook: Itchily optimistic
You can't officially call yourself a resident of the west coast until you finish your first cleanse. I don't care how long you say you've lived here, until you find yourself unquestioningly consuming unregulated tablets that claim to improve your liver function, as well as earnestly discussing your bowel functions with other cleanse survivors aficionados, you're just a tourist.
Rusty and I lost our cleanse innocence several years ago, and even though we've both come to sort of believe that all the tablets and tinctures that supplement most store-bought cleanse kits are utter snake oil, we still like to follow the cleanse diet for a couple of weeks every six months or so, usually at Rusty's behest. This is funny mainly because, while Rusty is generally the one to instigate a cleanse, he's also the first to rail against it. Here's a typical week of Rusty's internal monologue:
Pre-cleanse: "Boy, I sure am looking forward to this cleanse! I'm going to clean up my eating habits and cut out all that beer and sugar and grease. It's going to be great."
Day 1: "What should I have for breakfast? What... puffed kamut and soymilk? This sucks."
Day 2: "I know that technically bacon isn't allowed, but beef is, and they're practically the same thing."
Day 3: "Cleanses are stupid. Whose stupid idea was this?"
Day 4: "What's the point of eating healthy all the time in order to live longer if your life sucks because you can't eat anything good?"
Day 5: "Grumble."
Day 6: "I hate hippies and their dumb hippie ideas. We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks."
Day 7: "Are we done yet? ONE MORE WEEK? Fuuuuuuuuck."
Guess which day we're on? Ding-ding-ding! If you guessed day one, come up to the head of the class.
Now, unlike Rusty, I actually think I eat pretty well most of the time. For the most part, I'm all organic this, and free-range that, and whole-grain the other. However, every so often chocolate needs to be reminded of its proper place in my life (i.e. as an accompaniment to vegetables, rather than in lieu of vegetables), and the best way to get this message across is with a good old-fashioned shunning. So I ostracize all things chocolate for a couple of weeks, and it obediently resumes its rightful place after dinner and stops invading all my other fuelling stops.
The first few times we did the cleanse thing were grim experiments. We had no idea what we were doing and, equipped only with a pitifully short list of permitted foods, we pretty much just ate them in their unadorned state, almost dying of gustatory ennuie in the process.
Nowadays, though, we're somewhat pros at this endeavour and, armed with a battalion of cookbooks, I've promised Rusty that this will be the Best Cleanse Ever! If you've been thinking about cleaning up your culinary act, you may enjoy these, too.
Vegetarian Burgers by Bharti Kirchner
I heard about this cookbook at Vegan Lunch Box, where it received rave reviews. Having endured way too many summer barbecues where I was a slave to store-bought veggie patties, I declared that the summer of 2006 would be the summer of home-made burgers. So far, so good. I haven't made it past the quinoa and black bean burgers, which I've already made three times because they're so damned tasty. Sam loves them, too, especially if I reheat them and add a thin layer of hoisin sauce. Yum.
Moosewood Restaurant New Classics
This is my favourite of all the Moosewood cookbooks. Most of the recipes are vegetarian versions of homey, comfort-food favourites, such as the homespun pot pie, which is magnificent. (I leave out the mushrooms, though, and substitute yams for the potatoes. The recipe is pretty flexible that way.) They also have a great recipe for roasted vegetable quesadillas and a nice section dedicated to one of my favourite eggy treats, the noble frittata.
Hollyhock Cooks
Along similar lines to the Moosewood Collective, this cookbook is a collection of recipes from the locally famous Hollyhock Retreat, located on Cortes Island. I've never been to Hollyhock, but friends have, particularly The Fabulous Suzi, whose judgment can always be trusted on all things food-related. When I spied this cookbook at her place, I knew immediately that I had to have one of my own. My faith was not unfounded. This book more than paid for itself with the recipes for carrot soup and black bean and chipotle soup alone.
What's Cooking Vegetarian by Jenny Stacey
This is one of those massive compendiums of well-photographed recipes that I can never resist. Photos, cookbook editors! Photos! I can't understand the thinking behind cookbooks that don't include pictures of the final product. I don't know if it's a budget thing or if it's because cookbook editors, being foodies themselves, don't realize that the ignorant masses (i.e. me) need pictures to show us what the end result is supposed to look like or else we're literally flying blind. Take my favourite, most-used recipe from this collection, for example: how would I know just how to lovingly (and liberally) sprinkle grated cheddar over each individual serving of vegetable and corn chowder IF I DIDN'T SEE IT IN THE PHOTO?
Four Ingredient Recipes by Joanna Farrow
After sampling the tomato and tapenade tarts from this cookbook at Shona's house, I had to get my mitts on this volume. Not only is it beautifully photographed, and not only does it come in a handy flipbook format that you can actually stand up on your counter while you work, but each recipe has only four ingredients! How brilliant is that? While it's not a healthy/vegetarian cookbook, per se, with only four ingredients per recipe it's easy to identify the bad/meaty ingredients and substitute them with something else. Four-ingredient cooking may be anathema to serious foodies who prefer more complexity and a greater challenge, but dude, it's right up my alley.
I just finished the research portion of a huge presentation I've been working on with a bunch of co-workers! This is in no way related to my blog, but I needed to share. Woo! TGIFF! (Do you need to ask what the extra "F" is for?)
Landismom's recent-ish post over at her site reminded me that I've been meaning to write about young Master Sam's evolving reading habits.
Before Sam came along, I had some pretty romantic ideas about how I'd someday read to my baby and how he or she would grow up loving books and how we would have this beautiful lifelong dialogue about literature and life that would always keep us close, no matter how far apart we might be.
I don't know how other book-loving parents reacted when this happened to them, but I don't think "utterly heartbroken" is too strong a phrase for how I felt the first time my budding young Lionel Trilling pitched a screaming fit when we were three pages into a book. Or the first time I proudly presented him with his very own book to hold... and he immediately tried to rip out the pages. I barely survived these experiences. If he turns into one of those toddlers who scribble in books, you may find me lying dead on the floor with my cold, stiff hands clutching my chest in horror.
Oh, we had some marginal early successes. For a brief shining period, I could pluck a reluctant smile from our formerly grim little baron if I read Green Eggs and Ham in just the right way. And you may recall my recounting how the opening passage to The Wind in the Willows helped Sam through a bout of post-nap weltschmerz. And we do read Goodnight Moon every night before bed, though we seldom make it all the way through. (Sam twigged to his pre-bedtime schedule pretty quickly: dinner, tooth-brushing, bath, and storytime, followed by nursing and bed. You see where the story falls in the timeline? Sometimes all Sam does is see the book before he's writhing in my lap, trying to turn around and pull my shirt up over my head.)
For the most part, Sam has always been more the adventurer sort. Until recently. It's too early to call, of course, but I'm holding out for appending that title to adventurer-scholar. My boy, the Victorian renaissance man. I'm already designing his library, complete with wooden bookcases and little oxblood leather wing chairs and butterflies under glass cases. When do you think is a good age for this sort of set-up? Three? Four?
These days, Sam no longer just suffers me to read to him. He chooses books -- he has his own shelf on the bottom of our big bookcase for his big-kid books, as well as a basket of board books next to his toybox -- and brings them over to me to read to him. And at the risk of sounding, well, like a totally typical parent, I must tell you that it's the Cutest Thing Ever. Our customary reading posture is me sitting cross-legged on the floor with him parked in my lap. So when Sam wants to read, he gets his book then does this hilariously awkward backward crawl toward me, scooching his butt at my lap much like a person getting down off the roof dangles their foot searchingly for the top rung of the ladder. Frequently he falls short of the mark and lands butt-first a foot or so away. Darling, yes?
If you're still reading, first, god bless you. And second, I thought I'd make a little list of some of Sam's totally uncoached favourite reads these days. If you know any 14-month-olds -- or you just want to get in touch with your own inner toddler -- they (or you) might get a charge out of them, too.
The Peace Book by Todd Parr
This unrelentingly hippy-ish picture book is Sam's talking-down-from-the-ledge book. When he's super-crabby, all I have to do is show him this book and he'll mopishly rein in his grumps, almost despite himself. Each page starts with the line "Peace is..." and then offers a colourfully illustrated definition. Did you know that peace is having lots of books? Of course you did. Did you also know that peace is keeping someone warm? It is, indeed. Sam's favourite page, however, is "Peace is giving a hug to a friend." Awww.
Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs by Byron Barton
The Peace Book was a thoughtful gift from Libby and Sam's little buddy Jonah. Libby sure knows how to pick 'em, because she also gave Sam another mainstay of his top five list, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs. We've read this book so many times, I have it committed to memory, from the opening line, "A long time ago there were dinosaurs," to the closer, which is accompanied by an illustration of some sleeping triceratops (triceratopses?), "And there were very tired and very, very sleepy dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, a long time ago." It's a sweet little book, so long as you ignore the ominous suggestion that all the dinosaurs went extinct because they fell asleep and didn't wake up.
Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed by Eileen Christelow
DoppelSis gave this book to Sam on her recent visit, and he LOVES it. You may already be familiar with the cautionary rhyme in which five little monkeys persist in jumping on the bed, despite the exasperated warnings of the family doctor, and despite the fact that, one by one, they're removed from the equation by terrible head injuries. The irony of this book is that, while counting and rhyming are fun, they're not nearly as much fun as jumping on beds. Fortunately, irony is still lost on Sam. The hardest part of reading this book aloud is fighting the urge to make up your own dire lyrics about the dark fate of "Twelve Little Monkeys."
Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever!
Sam fascinatedly PORES over the hundreds of pictures in this huge illustrated dictionary-like book for toddlers. I love a reference book as much as the next person, but to be honest I don't quite get the appeal of this book for Sam. It's a great book, yes, but I would've pegged it as better fare for a three- or four-year-old. Perhaps he's doing research for his novel. I don't know. Whatever it is he's studying for, he's not telling.
Wow! Babies! by Penny Gentieu
Sam finds the babies in this book of photography almost as entrancing as the hundreds of pictures we show him of himself in iPhoto. Each two-page spread shows a half-dozen or so pictures of babies, all centred around a theme, such as eating or sleeping or even crying. Sam is captivated by them all, but his hands-down favourite is the collage of babies smiling and laughing, which never fails to crack him up.
Got any suggestions for books for toddlers? My ears are always open.
At some point in the past day or so, the odometer on this site clicked past a magical milestone: 200,000 visits.
Well, technically, we probably passed that marker a while back, but I didn't start tracking visits till just over a year ago. Either way, exciting!
If this site were a car, I'd probably have to think about trading it in. On the other hand, if this site were a car, it would probably be an old-school Volvo, so at 200,000 clicks it'd just be hitting its stride. But I digress. And given that Blogger doesn't seem to be allowing some folks to comment these days, perhaps my Volvo analogy shouldn't be scrutinized too closely. Let's move along.
For a while now, I've been looking for an opportunity -- not that I should really need one -- to say a few things. I want to tell you all how flattered I am that you come here, and how enormously honoured I am every time I learn that someone has added me to their blogroll or otherwise linked to 50 Books. I want to tell you how much I appreciate everyone who takes a few seconds or minutes to post, whether it's a comment on a book or just a note telling me you've dropped by. I read every single comment you leave, and I wish I had enough time to respond personally to each one.
This site means a lot to me. It's the first time I've ever tried to order my thoughts around the books I read, and this is a (no doubt narcissistic) exercise I've come to really enjoy. Plus, I can finally remember the plots of books I've read a whole six months ago! Unprecedented!
Most importantly -- and unexpectedly -- I've found an amazing community of likeminded readers. When I started this blog almost a year and a half ago, thinking it would just be a list of the books I'd read, I hesitated over whether to allow comments. My first thought was, Who the heck's even going to find my site, much less post on it? And my second thought was, What if people do find my site, and they're crazy? My misgivings were unfounded. If any of you are crazy, you're the best kind of crazy.
I've been around this ol' internet for a long time, and my throat closes up when I think about how proud and moved I am that one of the nicest, smartest groups of people I've ever encountered online is a bunch of characters I met right here on my own site. As much as I love writing my posts for you to read, I love even more reading your funny, intelligent, thoughtful replies. There've been times -- especially during the long, dark, wet winter when I was confined to the house all day with young Master Sam and duelling head colds -- when you all saved me from me from certain insanity. You may not realize that you did, but you did.
I consider you all friends, lurkers and non-lurkers alike. May the Great Librarian give you all the books you've ever desired, and all the time in the world in which to read them.
If you've been playing along at home for a while now, you may recall an interesting ongoing side debate that's been happening about short story writer Alice Munro here on 50 Books.
It started when I posted quite a while ago that I'd love to live inside Munro's head for a while, and Diablevert* replied that she'd really rather not because she finds Munro cold. I thought that was interesting, and it percolated inside my brain for a year before I posted that Diablevert's comment had made a fascinating lens through which to read Munro's latest story collection, Runaway... but I still respectfully disagreed with her.
I love discourse like this. To me, whether you love or hate Munro (not that I'm saying Diablevert hates Munro, mind you), the fact that she merits such scrutiny is a testament to my belief (and others') that Munro is one of the most important short story writers of our time. So of course I was beyond delighted when Diablevert emailed me a couple of weeks ago, letting me know that after reading one of Munro's stories that had been published in The New Yorker, she was compelled to write a lengthy response to it on her site.
I wanted to give both the story and Diablevert's response the attention they deserve, which meant waiting a couple of weeks until I had a couple of free hours to read and think. I've done both.
(At this point, I should suggest that you first read Munro's story, "Dimension," which is available in its entirety here. Then you should read Diablevert's blog entry about the story. Then -- ideally -- you should come back here and pick up where you left off. Sorry. No one ever said the internet was always going to be easy. I should also mention tangentially that, by crazy coincidence, Exxie recently ended her reading slump with Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and she wrote some terrific observations you might also want to read... and not just because they happen to dovetail rather nicely with my own thoughts. Heh.)
Okay, assuming that you've done all that (or else stop reading now, because spoilers aplenty are about to ensue), I'm going to go out on a limb and state that I think one of the fundamental differences Diablevert and I have in reading this story -- and it's a difference that may be the crux of the is-Munro-cold-or-compassionate debate -- is whether or not we believe that Doree is at any point actually going to reconcile with the man who murdered her children.
I did not believe it for a second.
I can see how, in the insanity of grief, and in the loneliness that accompanies enormous loss (a loneliness that is exacerbated by the fact that other people shy away from looking at grief head on, and that THIS is heightened by the fact that Doree's grief has been caused by such a monstrous event, when most people can't or won't talk nakedly about monstrosities), and with the feeling that her memories of her children are slipping away... I can see how, under all these circumstances, Doree herself might believe that she is actually considering returning to her children's killer, their father, the only other person who can remember the reality of her children as well as she can.
But. BUT. I'm going to make a bold, sweeping, totally unproveable declaration:
No sane woman -- and Doree, however ravaged by grief and loss and loneliness, is not insane -- could actually return to a man who killed her children, children who grew in her body for endless months, children she nurtured past those terrifying newborn months when babies seem so dangerously helpless and fragile, children whose smells and voices and touch she knows as well as her own. It's just not possible. I know this in my gut.
All this is why I believe that what Munro is doing in this story is taking us deep inside someone's grief, and making this grief realer and darker and more nuanced than the two-dimensional picture of grief we're given by most books and movies and TV shows.
Which brings me to the allegations that Munro is detached from her subjects. To some degree, I agree with this, though I think the detachment comes from a different place than coldness. As Exxie points our in her post, detachment seems like a necessary mode when writing about strong, strange feelings in a non-maudlin way. Trying to shed bright light on the foreign recesses of our psyches calls for some degree of almost scientific objectivity.
But rather than believe that Munro is cold, I think of the almost frightening humanity of a person who can write about something that most of us shy away from even thinking about, a person who can, with deceptive matter-of-factness, help us see through the eyes of a woman who has experienced possibly the worst thing a mother can experience, a person who seems inutterably fearless about peeling back the skin of some of our worst fears.
Doree notes uncomplainingly that "Nobody who knew about it would want me around. All I can do is remind people of what nobody can stand to be reminded of." She's right. It's a shaming truth, but she's right. I think that what Munro has done, in a microcosmic way, is shed some much-needed light on all the dark horrors that happen in our world that we try to avoid. I see this as a sign of her humanity, that she makes us bear witness to the total spectrum of humanity that surrounds us.
This, coincidentally enough, leads me to a recent addition to my book tally.
Hey Nostradamus!
by Douglas Coupland (#20)
I was disinclined to read this book for quite a while. First, I found the title a bit pretentious, I'm afraid to say. And second, the story's premise -- a Columbine-style tragedy -- worried me. I was afraid that the novel would be exploitive. It's not. In fact, it may be Coupland's finest, most heartfelt work to date, and I think everyone should read it.
The story is told through the eyes of four different characters, all connected to each other, but at different points in time. And while the high-school shooting spree that precipitates the story may hearken to Columbine, what this novel does is take us past the sensationalism to the real people, to the domino effect that tragedy has on the lives it touches, and to the various ways -- not all of them nice or touching or redemptively movie-of-the-weekish -- people react to tragedy when it touches them.
Most interesting, it's a story about faith and belief, which may come as a surprise to anyone who long ago wrote off "Generation X" as devoid of spirituality.
Coupland is not Munro. She, as I've mentioned, may be one of the finest living writers working in the English language. Coupland? Well, with Hey Nostradamus! he's giving signs that he may be entering the big leagues, as well. What Munro and Coupland share is a fearlessness in writing about things most of us don't even like to think about, as well as a graceful way of tackling these things with a disconcertingly head-on honesty that respects the subject matter.
I can tell you this: while reading Munro's story and the first part of Coupland's novel, I felt my heartbeat dislocate so that its thudding felt out of step with my body's rhythm, making me feel almost sick to my stomach. I take this as a fairly obvious sign that a writer is taking you to a new, uncomfortable place. And anyone who can do this can't be cold. There's no way a cold person could tap into another human being's empathic system in such an immediate physical way.
I've been thinking about this a lot, and it's going to be swirling around in my brain for a lot longer. I'm interested to know what you all think.
*Gosh, I just realized that I've been assuming all this time that Diablevert is a woman, and I don't think I have any evidence to support this. Diablevert, if I'm wrong, my apologies! And please correct me if this is the case!
Wh-wh-wh-what happened? Is today Tuesday? I think I blacked out, dude. I blame the aliens. Or possibly, the aliens in conjunction with the saucer people and the reverse vampires. I'd check for signs of probing, but I'm afraid to look.
Okay, what actually happened (because I'm sensing you don't believe my blackout story) was that Tara, AKA The Artist Formerly Known as Wing Chun, and her lovely assistant Glark were in town, and between our whirlwind tour of eastside massage parlours and the crippling bout of flatulence induced by the delicious (if I say so myself) black-bean-and-quinoa burgers I whipped up for us using a recipe from this fabulous cookbook, blogging fell off my list of things to do. But not only am I back, I'm back with a 50 Books first: a reader's request for book recommendations!
Jennifer is the mom of a two-year-old AND a three-year-old (she doesn't recommend this to just everyone) and she's finally at a point where she has time to read again. She's looking for "something really good and possibly funny and/or trashy to read this summer."
The last book Jennifer really enjoyed was by Jeffrey Steingarten (I haven't heard of him myself, so I'm a bit stumped here), and she's been reading a lot of Nora Roberts (also drawing a blank, I'm embarrassed to admit) because her mom has copies everywhere. Her favourite book in college was Possession, and her favourite in high school was The Scarlet Letter.
One last note from Jenn: "I got a recommendation for The Secret Lives of Bees but I really can't take emotionally crippling plots. If it's just a good book without the super-crying factor, let me know."
I've been giving Jenn's request some thought for a couple of days. Because I haven't read any of Steingarten's or Roberts's books, I can't work from that. I have read Possession, which I liked, so from there I might suggest some of Byatt's other books. I've always liked her short stories, so perhaps Sugar and Other Stories or The Matisse Stories.
And for fun summer reads... well, you may recall how much I've been enjoying Alexander McCall Smith's novels lately. And for a funny read, I also really liked Winner of the National Book Award.
So there are my 1.5 cents. Any other suggestions for Jennifer? Fire away.
The Dewey Donation System is a mere 258 donations away from hitting the 1000 mark! And in just six days! I'm going to check out the wishlists again to see if there are any new titles I can send. It would be wonderful to crack 1000 within the first week.
Don't ever make the mistake of thinking you can anticipate and control your reading experience. Books will always get the last word. So to speak.
Elizabeth and After
by Matt Cohen (#19)
For starters, you should know that I've been hiding from Russell Banks's novel The Darling for a few months now. I want to read it, I really do, because I heart Banks big time, but after the psychic bruising administered by Affliction, the last book of his I read (which you should also read, because it's really, really good), I've been steeling myself. I'm not quite there yet. But then I got shanghaied by Elizabeth and After, which, while not quite on the same wrenching level as Affliction, definitely gave me a minor drubbing.
Also, if you read my thoughts on a couple of Cohen's short story collections a while back, you may recall that my biggest criticism of his writing is that, while it's definitely artful and subtle and nuanced and all that, his characters themselves seem basically unlikeable, so much so that I don't even think Cohen himself likes them.
I should clarify my terms: when I think about likeability, I'm not thinking about people who are paragons of virtue, because duh, those would be the least likeable people of all. I like flaws. Plenty of flaws. Deep flaws. Even mortal flaws. You get my drift. But I think that a writer's art lies in being honest about their characters' moral shortcomings while still representing their total humanity. This is where Cohen's short stories fell short, and I was expecting the same from Elizabeth and After. But then when Marianne posted in the comments section that she's been saving this novel to read, I thought I should give it a chance. I'm glad I did.
The novel form finally allows Cohen enough space to give his characters the humanity they need to be sympathetic. The characters in Elizabeth and After have issues, big issues: alcoholism, violence, infidelity, and a maddening inability to make good decisions. All this coupled with some wincingly bad luck. But throughout the novel I found myself rooting for them, hoping that THIS time maybe they'd make the right choice, THIS time fate wouldn't kick them in the guts. And to me that is the hallmark of a fine story: when you care about the characters. When you want them SO BADLY to come out on top. When, despite the ominous rumbling of foreshadowing, you find yourself in denial about the inevitable course of events.
This is suspension of disbelief, my friends, and Cohen nails it in this novel. I even forgive him for making me feel badly about my former assessment of his abilities.
I'm beat and young Master Sam decided to breeze past his morning nap without consulting me first. Urg. He's finally down for his afternoon snooze, and I'm off to (try to) do the same. I'm an even worse napper than Sam, so wish me luck.
Rather than not post at all today, I thought I'd give a Dewey Donation System update, since I'm addicted to checking the site several times a day for progress reports. As of a few minutes ago, 560 books have been donated by 204 people just like you! In under a week! That is twelve different flavours of awesome.
If you haven't had a chance to make your contribution yet, because you've been busy or the wishlists have been almost empty, I think the wishlists have all been recently topped up, so there should be lots of choices available.
And if circumstances won't allow you to help out right now, don't feel bad! We've all been there. But your heart's in the right place, and you'll have many, many opportunities in the future.
I am trying to have a positive attitude toward the World Cup.
I am trying to have a positive attitude toward the World Cup.
I am trying to have a positive attitude toward the World Cup.
I am trying to have a positive attitude toward the World Cup.
I am trying to have a positive attitude toward the World Cup.
I am trying to have a positive attitude toward the World Cup.
I am trying to have a positive attitude toward the World Cup.
I am trying to have a positive attitude toward the World Cup.
I am trying to have a positive attitude toward the World Cup.
I am trying to have a positive attitude toward the World Cup.
Reasons for:
- Only happens every four years.
- Soccer is actually a pretty cool sport.
- Global cameraderie, world coming together in sport, good fellowship among men, etc.
Reasons against:
- Lasts too goddamned long.
- Large groups of men gathered together = not a good idea due to collective loss of IQ points.
- Tendency of people who live in other parts of city to congregate in my neighbourhood because they want to become (temporarily) ethnic by osmosis.
- Tendency of same people to forget that not everyone shares their love of egregious noisemaking at all hours, and to ignore the fact that they'd never tolerate this level of hullaballoo in their own posher neighbourhoods.
- Tendency of same to gather in my favourite coffee shop and park themselves right in front of the bar, thereby preventing me from ordering my much-needed mocha. Ironically, my need for said coffee is precipitated by having been woken up at 6:00 am by soccer revellers such as themselves. (Admittedly, Sam was probably going to wake me up at 6:15, but it's the PRINCIPLE, people.)
- Brazilian drum band, clearly amateur in origin, that has set up impromptu shop outdoors just three houses from mine. (I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that the people who brought us ass-waxing also brought us really terrible drumming. Note to wannabe drummers: The reason why drums are popular at raves and UNpopular everywhere else is because Ecstasy makes it hard for you to hate things with the venom they rightfully deserve.)
- Guy with airhorn in front of my house, who seemed surprised when I went outside and told him to stop because he'd woken up my baby.
- And let's not forget the most powerful reason of all: don't really give a crap who wins.
Bookshelves. Plain old pieces of wood placed horizontally so that they intersect with equally mundane vertical pieces of wood? BOR-ing. Oh, sure, those were fine for pioneers and whatnot, but we're living in the 21st century, people... the age of rocketpacks! And miniature pet elephants! I think we can do a bit better.
First up, if all you German people want to ditch your reputation for being sensible and pragmatic, then stop coming up with such genius practical ideas, okay? Our Teutonic friends bring us these foldable shelves, which are brilliant, especially if you're one of those nomadic types who still likes to heft your books along with you when you move. If the Mongol hordes had had shelves like these, they probably would have been a lot better read and perhaps a bit less heavyhanded with the roving and pillaging.
Another variation on the invisible floating bookshelf concept is the Sticklebook, "the world's first invisible shelving system that creates the illusion of a line of books hanging unsupported on the wall." For the life of me, I cannot figure out how this thing works, and a close-up photo of the device, below, does very little to help me. I welcome your theories.
These Dryade shelves just make me happy. She looks like she's really enjoying that magazine. Much as I like this unit, though, it'd require reconfiguring our space, changing our colour scheme, and probably reprogramming our DNA to make it work. Try as I might, I just can't picture this comfortably ensconsed in our current "Victorian Modernist" aesthetic. But YM, as they say, MV.
If you've got that givin' feeling and you don't know where to point it without getting into trouble, Pamie (of Pamie) and Glark (of Glark) have teamed up to launch the Dewey Donation System, in support of Mississippi's Harrison County Library System, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Dewey makes it easy to donate. You can choose to order and send books from individual libraries' wishlists, or you can make a cash donation to a specific library. Cash donations will be used in rebuilding efforts or to fund existing library operations.
Want some inspiration? Go to Dewey's blog to read comments from people who've already donated. At the time of writing this post, 73 lovely souls have already given a grand total of 155 books and $1000. This doesn't include yours truly... yet. I'm off right now to check out the wishlists and make my own contribution. I hope to see you there.
Give books! All the same glowy feel-good potential as giving blood, but with less jabbing!
On the library tip, I've been thinking lately about how much I've always felt instinctively at home in them. When I was seven and my parents split up and we kids moved with our mom away from the family farm, one of the perks of being right in town was that we were just a few blocks away from the tiny public library. I'd never been in a library before, and I was almost overwhelmed by the glamour. So many books! So many kinds! And practically all just for me because, let's face it, this was a semi-rural library in a community that wasn't exactly a hotbed of the arts.
I used to spend hours in there at least once a week and never see a soul other than the librarian, a lovely older woman named Mrs. Campbell. I got to know Mrs. Campbell pretty well. I'd tell her what I thought about the books I'd just read, and she'd tell me about her grandchildren and how she lived with diabetes.
As the years passed, Mrs. Campbell relaxed her five-book limit and let me take out as many books as I liked, and later, when I'd exhausted the children's and young adults' sections, she allowed me to borrow books from the grown-ups' section, with her approval of the specific titles, even though I was technically too young.
The library probably did have other patrons, and I may have even seen some of them, though I don't remember them if I did, but I never lost my decadent feeling that all these books -- and Mrs. Campbell -- had been gathered in this place solely for my delectation. This library is where I discovered everything from The Waterbabies and Peter Pan to the Little House on the Prairie series and Seventeen magazine.
Since then, I've been in much bigger libraries, much better libraries, and much more beautiful libraries, but if you were to ask me what mental picture I come up with when I hear the word "library," I'd tell you that it's a one-room, windowless cinderblock building with flourescent overhead lighting and cheap wooden shelving lining the walls. In other words, the most amazing, magical place of my youth.
So, if and when you're thinking of contributing to the Harrison County Library System, remember the libraries of your childhood and remember everything they gave you and anticipate the innumerable gifts that you, by donating, will be giving to countless kids just like you.
There are a few things I probably could have done, but didn't, when our neighbour's broken burglar alarm woke us up at 4:40 am today and proceeded to go off every ten minutes till almost 7:00:
- Get some work done.
- Fold laundry.
- Give myself a much-needed pedicure. (Sandal season is going to come to the Pacific northwest eventually, right?)
- Read.
- Deal with my email backlog.
- Write a meaningful, well thought out post for today.
Instead, I hauled my tired old carcass to the gym and did a zombie-like workout on the elliptical trainer. Ever since realizing that speed-reading isn't a cardio activity, and that my ass -- which seems to have gone MIA since I lost the weight I gained during pregnancy -- isn't going to find its way back home on its own, I've been putting in my grudging five workouts a week. So at least that's out of the way.
Instead of giving you my own thought-provoking ideas, I'm going to plunder a few bookish blogs I like and give you some other people's thought-provoking ideas. Arrr, matey! I'm a blog pirate adrift on the high seas of the internet! Or something like that.
Mike has posted a section of a story he's been working on, and if you've been looking for confirmation that he's going to be a literary star one of these days and you want to be able to say you read him when, you should go read it.
Exxie is in a reading slump. I had one of those a couple of months ago and man, it sucks worrying that you're never going to find a book that fires up your brain and soul again. Give her some reading suggestions or encouraging words. Or you could send her money. I know that always makes me feel better.
Carrie has an excellent review in the current issue of Bookslut, and she challenges you to find it. I did, and I could tell you where it is, but that would just ruin the fun.
Karen has posted a link from her site to a lovely essay written by Michael Chabon on his site about, as she puts it, "the fleeting nature of the "memory-making" time we spend with our kids."
Speaking of children, I've really been enjoying Neal Pollack's site ever since he came over to the dark side and accepted that posts about your kids are the funnest things to write. Pollack took a lot of flak a while back for publicizing his struggles with his "spirited" toddler Elijah on Salon, but anyone who reads his hilarious entries about his adventures with his son can see that he's a caring, hands-on dad. But, you know, the public always needs a whipping boy so they can unleash all the secret resentment they still harbour toward their own parents. Last year it was Pollack. This month it's Britney. Next it could be you. Watch out!
That's all from me till Monday. And boy howdy, if you think posting about other people's sites is a lazy cheater's way to blog, then you've never done it. Over and out.
When I was a little kid, my grandmother, who was also a book fiend, had a joke book she kept in her bathroom. Entitled Jokes for the John, this book was, in my considered opinion, the finest collection of humour writing of all time. Not only the jokes, but also the concept that there could be a book especially designed for reading while on the toilet... well, it cracked my nine-year-old shit up.
These days, I no longer find the idea of books in bathrooms laugh-out-loud funny, and my toilet is home to a precarious stack of books and magazines that threatens to spill over and scare the bejeebus out of anyone who jostles it disrespectfully during a nocturnal visit to the can.
With the idea that you can tell a lot about people not just by looking at their shelves where they keep books neatly arranged for public digestion, but by assessing the more intimate collections they keep in places like their bedside table or their car or, of course, their bathroom, I offer my loo-brary for your inspection:
Beyond the Far Side
I know that Far Side comics are probably passé and all you youngfolk out there are saying to yourselves, "Gary who?" but every bathroom needs to have at least one collection of dated comics, and this is mine. So there.
Visual Power: Sex
Every bathroom also needs to have one book that's full of just plain weird, freaky-deaky arty words and pictures that you don't quite understand. I find this Eurotrashy collection of faux-philosophical writing paired with disturbing semi-pornographic imagery both compelling and repellent, depending which page I'm on. I can't tell if the publishers are poseurs or parodists, which is probably a sign of brilliance. This book fulfills the requirement of any decent loo-brary to house at least one book that makes you go, "What the fuck?"
Just Give'r: A Handguide by Terry & Dean
Every toilet worth its salt houses at least one book you wouldn't be caught reading outside the bathroom. In our house, this shame read is Terry and Dean's (of Fubar fame) illustrated guide to givin' 'er, a surprisingly handy little manual with instructions on everything from having sex in a canoe ("one of the hardest things a man can do") to giving presentations in school ("you're allowed to suck if you go first") to surviving a sandstorm ("try and locate a camel"). If you haven't seen Fubar (yet, because you're going to rent it tonight), you can still enjoy this book, but it won't be the same.
Found
A hallmark of any premiere bathroom literature is its ability to yield new riches with each perusal, no matter how many months or years it has graced its porcelain shelf. This is what separates the timeless classics from the passing fads. This is Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from around the World. Based on the website and zine of the same name, this collection is the best of the best of Found's... er... findings. We've had it for a year and a half, and just when I think I've exhausted its possibilities, it shows me something new. It's a bathroom miracle.
The Onion: Ad Nauseum
See above re: Found. You just can't go wrong with an Onion anthology, though for my money a better bet is Our Dumb Century. We don't own that one, so I have to go to Rizzo and the Baco-Vegetarian's bathroom to enjoy it. That's okay. It gets me out of the house.
So there you have it. My most private (or... are they? Bwahaha!) reading habits. You were expecting the collected letters of John Cheever, perhaps? Now 'fess up. What's in your loo-brary?
Try typing "50books.com" in your browser right now. Go on. I'll wait here.
Ha! You're back!
That's right. After over a year of having the precious 50books domain on backorder, hoping and praying that the nimrod who'd parked it and then abandoned it wouldn't arbitrarily decide to renew it like some kind of deadbeat dad who visits his kid every three years and wonders why he doesn't get a hug, I have emerged the victor!
Book nerd-dom has prevailed over domain squatter-dom! I win! We all win! But especially me!
How does this affect your life? Well, truthfully, not at all. Unless you're one of the kind souls who's placed me lovingly on your blogroll, in which case might I suggest that you consider pointing the link toward 50books.com? No reason, but you never know... one of these days I might just get off my sorry butt and migrate my site to a blog service provider that doesn't suck lemur balls.
Well, I picked up Candace Bushnell's latest novel, Lipstick Jungle -- which my friend The Fabulous Suzi passed along to me with the promise that it would be light, escapist reading -- and I ended up getting all wrangled up in thoughts about feminism and choice and supermoms, so that at times the plights of the story's characters coiled me up into such a tight spring of anxiety that I had to pick up a collection of Far Side comics to unwind before bed.
So much for light, escapist reading.
Lipstick Jungle
by Candace Bushnell (#18)
Now, it's not great literature, not by a long stretch. Bushnell is no Nabokov, and the novel has more than its share of clunky writing. But as my first foray into Bushnell's writing (notwithstanding my guilty-pleasure addiction to the Sex and the City TV series), Lipstick Jungle surprised me by being no-bullshitty and on point in several regards, namely the issues of power, choice, and female solidarity.
For example, check out this passage, which takes place after one of the main characters, a high-powered publishing executive, starts the ball rolling on a screw job she's planning against her asshole boss:
God, it was a heady feeling. She'd never experienced anything like it in her life. It was oddly centering. From outside her consciousness, she knew that, as a woman, she should have felt guilty. She should have felt bad or frightened for not being "nice." And for one tiny moment, she was afraid. But what was she afraid of? Her power? Herself? Or the archaic idea that she had done something "bad," and therefore would have to be punished.
Sitting in her office that afternoon, having just hung up the phone with Bruce, she suddenly saw that she would not be punished. There were no rules. What most women thought were "the rules" were simply precepts to keep women in their place. "Nice" was a comfortable, reassuring box where society told women if they stayed -- if they didn't stray out of the nice-box -- they would be safe. But no one was safe. Safety was a lie...
Now, I have to come clean and admit that I lean toward the "nice" end of the spectrum myself, and I have no interest in changing. It's nice to be nice. But I'm not pushover nice, though it took me a couple of decades to get past that, so I sort of hear Bushnell's point. I don't think I'd be capable of deliberately screwing over a colleague, though lord knows I can think of a couple who would've deserved it. I don't think my lack of cutthroat-ness is a female thing, though, as I don't know any guys with the cutthroat gene, either.
At any rate, I like how Bushnell follows this idea through by having the character wonder what exactly it is that women fear will happen, what sort of karmic slapdown will occur, if they ever stop playing the nice game. I've wondered the same thing.
Whoops. I just realized that I haven't really mentioned what the novel is about. In a nutshell, it tells the stories of three friends, all powerful women in their fields, all in their forties, as they juggle their families, relationships, and vicious workplace politics in the sticky quagmire of our rapidly changing gender landscape. (And there are some dirty bits, too, thank god, because sheesh, I was starting to worry about what had happened to the place of good old-fashioned softcore in the world of chick lit. Jackie Collins can't carry that banner all by herself, people.)
As I've mentioned, there are lots of stressy plot points that, no fooling, actually had me biting my nails, but things resolve nicely and all the women come out on top. Whew. Bushnell, however, does give a nod to the fact that this is not reality for most women:
"I mean, it's so easy to solve your problems when you're a successful woman and you have your own money," Wendy said. "I think about all the women who aren't, and don't, and the hell they must go through. It's something we can never forget."
"But that is the whole reason to become successful," Nico said fiercely. "It's when you really understand why you've worked so hard. So that when there is a crisis, your family doesn't have to suffer."
I do agree with this. While I've come to realize that I'm not ambitious for ambition's sake, I've learned that I feel very strongly about being able to provide for myself and for my family. At the same time, though, this passage troubles me, as it vaguely echoes the sentiments expressed a few months back by Linda Hirshman, when she wrote a kerfuffle-causing essay stating that educated women who don't pursue professional careers are failing feminism and themselves. This woman clearly has a different idea about choice and feminism than I do.
[Note: Here's where this entry gets confessional and all about my feelings and stuff, so if you're here for the book reviews or the baby pictures or the hope that someday I'll post some naughty Jane Austen fanfic, you should probably stop reading and come back tomorrow.]
To some degree, I've opted out of the hierarchical system of work. When Sam was born, I took a year of maternity leave. During my time outside a structured work environment -- my first real break in almost fifteen years -- I've realized that I'm simply not cut out for it. Have I failed feminism? Has feminism failed me? Funny questions. I don't feel like a failure. But maybe we failures are always the last ones to know.
I think the reason why this epiphany evaded me for so long is because, to all outward appearances, I appeared to be making it rather successfully up the so-called ladder, even in male-dominated professions. And I believe that my nicey-nice qualities were what helped me get so far.
Not that I didn't bring real skills to the table. I did, but what I also brought were a lack of professional ego, a dearth of competitive spirit, and a powerful need to have managers and co-workers and clients like me. These are all qualities that make you a good "team player," a malleable employee... and highly promotable, because no matter how high you climb (or, rather, are pulled) up the ladder, you're never going to be perceived as a threat by your higher-ups.
Hm... this makes it sound like I worked for power-mad jackasses who were only looking for meek women to exploit, and that certainly was not the case. For starters, certainly nobody's ever called me meek... heh. And I've always been well rewarded for my work. And I've had more than my share of luck in working for good people. Nothing I'm saying is a criticism of my bosses. I'm just pointing out the different workplace archetypes and how they rub up against each other.
Okay, disclaimers aside, here's what my situation boiled down to. In my year away from the workplace, I realized that any time I'm immersed for too long in an organization, I lose myself. They are Borg, and I am assimilated. And then I get quietly resentful and lash out by engaging in subversive activities such as only giving 100 percent instead of 110 percent.
I wish I were made of sturdier stuff, but I'm not. Maybe some day, when time and life have toughened me up a bit more. Cross your fingers.
Where I don't feel lost, ever, is at home with Sam. (Well, technically, I work -- with fluctuating degrees of productivity -- from home and have the lifesaving help of a babysitter to make each day pass relatively sanely.) This mom thing has come surprisingly easily to me... though I shouldn't say "surprisingly" when deep down I'm not really surprised at all. In fact, secretly I've always harboured the thought that being a mother might be the one thing I'm perfectly cut out to do. It's taken almost twenty years to come round to the realization that that's not an INSULT.
I have good ol' third-wave feminism to thank for making me feel (mostly) comfortable for making the choice to put my child first and my work second. In fact, I have feminism and its supporters to thank for many of my most important decisions:
- thanks to legislation, grants, loans, scholarships, and fellowships, the choice to go to school and continue my education as far as I wish;
- thanks to, well, a bunch of things, the choice to marry whomever I want whenever I want;
- thanks to hard-won reproductive rights, the choice to postpone childbearing until my mid-thirties, and the ability to choose not to bear children at all if that were my preference;
- thanks to equally hard-won parental-leave rights, the choice to take a year away from my job so that I can do the crucial work of giving my child the best possible start -- according to my own standards -- in life;
- thanks to breastfeeding advocates, the choice to feed my child in public without the risk of being arrested; and
- thanks to suffrage, the choice to vote for a political party that, however flawed, helped enact or protect many of these choices.
I know that feminism still has a long way to go, as do human rights everywhere. I realize that, lucky as I am, globally I'm still in a tiny minority of women who are able to exercise so much control over their lives. I definitely feel a variation of survivor guilt over this. But do I think I should regret my choices because others don't have them? Not a fucking chance. Understanding my own choices fills me with the fire to champion the same opportunities for women everywhere.
Have I digressed too far? Am I pushing your limits if I force the pendulum back to the book? I just wanted to highlight one last passage from Lipstick Jungle (a novel which, by the by, has one of the corniest final lines I've ever read):
But women like Wendy and Victory and herself, Nico thought, were a new model of powerful women. They weren't bitches, and they weren't enamored with that old-fashioned idea that being with powerful men made you more important. The new power babe wanted to be around other powerful women. They wanted women to be ruling the world, not men.
I like this. In the new world order according to me, we're all power babes. Even the men.
On the flip side (ha! flip... geddit?), this clever little notebook and pencil combo just about made my list-lovin' day. First, of course, it satisfies my nerd passion for listmaking, but then it goes one further by using GRAPH PAPER. Oh my stars. I think I've stumbled into some kind of anal retentive fantasy. The clever little pencil insert is almost overkill. Almost.
you'll suddenly be seized by the compulsion to make a list of, oh, say, your favourite 1980s rock anthems featuring women on lead vocals.* Or a grocery list. I understand that some people like to write those, too. That's where this handy-dandy shower tablet comes in handy.
Soooo pretty. Mama likes.
