Me Book Read Good

Well, thank goodness Richard Schickel is here to set us all straight about a couple of things:

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work, among other qualities.

Clearly, Mr. Schickel has yet to read my penetrating critical analysis of One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and Green Eggs and Ham. I think he'd realize pretty quickly just how seriously we bloggers take this criticism business.

If your appetite for condescension is as voracious as mine, read further for morsels like this:

D.J. Waldie, among the finest of our part-time scriveners, in effect said "fine." But remember, he added, blogging is a form of speech, not of writing.

I thought it was a wonderful point. The act of writing for print, with its implication of permanence, concentrates the mind most wonderfully. It imposes on writer and reader a sense of responsibility that mere yammering does not. It is the difference between cocktail-party chat and logically reasoned discourse that sits still on a page, inviting serious engagement.

Maybe most reviewing, whatever its venue, fails that ideal. But a purely "democratic literary landscape" is truly a wasteland, without standards, without maps, without oases of intelligence or delight.

Well, I, for one, adore yammering away over here on my oasis of idiocy.

Meh. I can't even summon the energy to be insulted. What's come over me?

You know, this "web versus print" debate reminds me of the various online mommy wars I've noticed over the past couple of years. SAHMs versus WOHMs. Bottle versus breast. Cocktail playdates versus teetotal playdates. (FYI: I'm in favour of the former.) These are all media-concocted brouhahas designed to fill up column space and get attention.

At the end of the day, people who love books are like people who have kids: more alike than not. Let's accept it, get over ourselves, and move on. There are books to be read. And, apparently, fewer people than ever are reading them. Shouldn't those of us who remain have a friendly little cuddle to try to stay warm... perhaps around one of Tom Wayne's book-fuelled bonfires?

(Ups to Rusty for the link. I think this was supposed to be my anniversary present. He knows how to keep the magic alive.)

BOOKS: Priorities

Scene from a toddler's pre-bedtime story ritual:

"What's that, Sam?"
"A backhoe."
"That's right. What's that over there?"
"That's an excavator over there."
"And what's that?"
"That's a forklift."
"You're right. And what's that?"
"A compact auger."
"Yes, that is a compact auger."
"And another compact auger, and another compact auger, and another compact auger..."
"There are a lot of compact augers."
"One, two, three, four, five, six, nine, TEN."
"Wow. That is a lot."
"..."
"You know what? I love you, Sammy."
"I love this articulated dump truck."

ETC: Finally, Incentive to Get My Licence

I'm back. So tired. Book stuff to come. Later.

In the meantime, let me introduce you to my favourite photo of the week -- apropos of very little, save my documented love of cupcakes -- courtesy of Scott Beale at Laughing Squid:


(See the original here.)

BOOKS: How to Pander to Today's Modern Toddler

I've only been back a couple of days, but in just a few hours I'm getting on another plane, this time with Rusty and Sam as we head back to Ontario to visit family. I'd be bitter about the five hours of missed reading time due to wrangling a busy two-year-old, but fortunately I had my shot at uninterrupted reading last week, and I know when to step back and be grateful.

No, this flight is going to be all about Sam, and in case you're wondering what to pack in your carry-on for a toddler, I'm here to tell you: whatever works. This is not the place for progressive boy-dolls or wooden puzzles from Europe or whimsical storybooks with gorgeous illustrations, no matter how much you yourself might love them. In-flight entertainment is all about pandering to their most obsessive-compulsive whims. Don't try to fight it.

So you can imagine the scene in the bookstore early today when Rusty and I were trying to pick out new books with which to surprise Sam once we're buckled in. Has a kid's psyche ever been this scrutinized by his or her parents? Well, probably. At any rate, here's what we decided on:

Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day?
Some of you may recall my strong sentiments about one of Scarry's other books, Cars and Trucks and Things That Go (aka "Purple Story"). Well, Sam loves Scarry, and I love Sam, which pretty much makes me Scarry's bitch. What can you do?

Where's Waldo? by Martin Handford
To answer my own question, I may not be able to do much, but I can throw a curveball at my short friend. So you like hunting for Goldbug, do you, Sammy? Have you met my pal Waldo? He likes hiding, too. Go on, look for him. I'll be waiting over here.

Dr. Seuss's ABC
This, of course, is pandering to Sam's insatiable desire for all things alphabetical. (Plus, I've been meaning to pick it up for a while.)

At a Construction Site by Don Kilby
For several months now, Sam is going through that important early childhood rite de passage known as "the heavy equipment phase". Much as it shames me (not really) to admit it, I'm totally exploiting his obsession in order to buy (or at least rent) myself a half hour of peace.

And when that half hour is up...

Big Trucks and Diggers in 3D by Mark Blum
What's better than construction machines in two dimensions? Do you even need to ask? This book is published by the good people at Caterpillar. And when Sam gets tired of it, we've got a JCB flier on standby. (You think I'm kidding. Ha.)

BOOKS: "This is the very newest kind of cracker factory."

Design*sponge is one of my favourite design blogs, and it was there that I first read about illustrator and pattern designer Julia Rothman, as well as about one of her side projects: a blog called Book By Its Cover, where she shares some of her favourite illustrated books.

It's a varied collection, combining the beautiful with the retro with the bizarre, organized into several categories. Not surprisingly I gravitated toward the children's stories. I'm glad I did. If it weren't for Rothman's site, I never would have known that Toni Morrison wrote a kids' story called The Big Box -- "about three children who have to live in a big brown box with a door with three locks because the adults think they 'can't handle their freedom'." -- which I think I may have to pick up.


I also wouldn't have learned that J.Otto Seibold, author of the modern classic Olive the Other Reindeer, has written a gorgeously twisted-looking pop-up version of Alice in Wonderland. Also now on my must-get list, especially now that I've tested Sam with other pop-up books and so far he's shown no propensity to tear out every protruding page element.


And finally, if I hadn't visited Rothman's site, I never would have seen this illustration from the book The Lollypop Factory. Finally, we get to see where Millhouse's dad works!

BOOKS: Three New Books You Should Read

So I'm back home. I've had a nap, I've imbibed some good homebrewed espresso, and I've read a gazillion books to Sam. I'd say I'm pretty much re-acclimatized.

Some highlights of my (very) short trip to Our Nation's Capital:

• Hanging out with Doppelsis and her brood. We went to an AWESOME used-book sale. It was in an historic mill that put out a call for book donations as part of a fundraising effort. They received so many books that they ended up reducing the sale price from a dollar a book to TEN CENTS a book. I almost cried at the fact that my tiny carry-on bag only allowed me to pick up two or three. Fortunately, Doppelsis picked up my slack and took home a shopping bag full of excellent picks.
• Catching up with my close friend David and his very cool wife Maria, something we haven't been able to do in way too long. David and I are book nerds from way back, and our weirdly intertwined work histories have included stints at our university newspaper, the same publishing company, and then alternating years in the same masters program. You know how it is with some friends where you rarely see each other face to face but when you do it's like you just saw each other yesterday? It was like that. Also, he used the word "louche" in a sentence. Which, you will agree, is awesome.
  
• I didn't run out of books after all. Whew.

Now that I'm back, I've realized that I'm probably more behind on my 50 books tally than I ever have been. Since I last updated, I've finished ELEVEN books and I'm close to finishing two more. This is about to get embarrassing, so I need to take some baby steps toward fixing this.

Now, usually I list books in the order in which I read them. But then Princess Haiku asked me for my top three recommendations for new fiction, and I thought that was an interesting question. So I'm going to answer it, even though it means breaking from chronology and triggering my mild latent OCD tendencies.

[Insert caveat about the fact that, of course, my knowledge of new fiction is pretty limited because I've only read a handful of recent-ish titles. But I'll do my best with what I've got.]

Lullabies for Little Criminals
by Heather O'Neill (#13)
If you have a heart, this book will break it, but you should read it anyway.

Lullabies came to my attention when it was the winning title in CBC's annual Canada Reads challenge. (If you don't know about this event, you can get some background here.) It was championed by John K. Sampson of The Weakerthans, who also supported Miriam Toews's A Complicated Kindness when it won Canada Reads last year. And since I loved A Complicated Kindness, I figured Sampson might be backing another winner. He was.

What's so incredible about Lullabies (and about Kindness, for that matter), is that these two books -- very different aside from the fact that they're both coming-of-age stories about troubled young women -- can speak to so many people. In the wrong hands, these kinds of stories could so easily be relegated to the same part of the bookstore reserved for Judy Blume books and copies of Go Ask Alice. But O'Neill (and Toews, too, of course) are far too skillful for that. (Don't get me wrong: I love me some Judy Blume novels. But award-winning fiction for grown-ups they ain't.)

The other thing these stories share is a deceptive simplicity, which is ultimately what gets to you. Told in the first person, the narrators tell their stories in a matter-of-fact way that says, better than anything else could, how resigned they are to the tidal pools of bad luck that are pulling at them. What's so realistic -- and heartbreaking -- is how these young women, both bright and insightful people, are prone, as so many young women are, to turning their negativity in upon themselves, allowing themselves to self-destruct with an eerie acceptance of their fates.

It's not all bleakness, though, I promise. Seriously, read this book. And if you haven't read A Complicated Kindness, you should probably get on that, too.

House of Meetings
by Martin Amis (#14)
Er, this novel is a bit heartbreaking, too. I may as well tell you that up front. Though I have a feeling you'd probably pick up on that for yourself after I told you that a significant part of the narrative takes place in a Russian gulag.

The main character -- an aging former soldier turned political prisoner turned wealthy businessman, who defected to America after his release from slavery but is now returning to Russia for a tour of the gulags of northern Russia -- couldn't be more different from a young Canadian girl. Or not on the surface, anyway. But I kept thinking as I read this book about how people, or any other animal for that matter, behave when confined in unnatural ways, whether in actual prisons or homes they can't escape. And I was thinking about how, ultimately, the instinct is to destroy -- either yourself or others. In the case of the unnamed narrator in this novel, it seems at first that he directs his rage outward, but of course nothing's ever as simple as that.

As someone who gets most of their knowledge of history from novels, I found House of Meetings hugely educational. It's rare that a book can teach you while also profoundly moving you. I haven't felt this way about a novel since reading Anne Michaels's Fugitive Pieces (which, since I'm already being bossy, you should also read.)

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
by Alexander McCall Smith (#15)
If you read the above books back to back, you might need a breather. This is where the latest instalment in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency comes in. I could tell you the plot, but if you're familiar with the series, you already know that the mysteries that form the ostensible plots of these books are just frameworks for McCall Smith's gentle ruminations on goodness: how rare it is, how we can recognize it and create it, and how we should forgive ourselves and start over when we fail.

On one hand, McCall Smith's books are easy reads, no doubt about it. But if you take away from his books the challenge of trying to be good, really good, you see that the hard part starts after you finish the last page.

So those are my three picks. What are yours?

ETC: Eight Things About Who? Me?

It's funny. I've noticed this "Eight Things About Me" meme floating around, and without ever thinking I'd be tagged, I've idly wondered what eight random things I'd be able to tell, since sometimes it feels like I've already spilled my entire life out on the internet.

And then Heidi tagged me. As it turns out, I haven't told everything.

1. I worked as an artist's model when I was in grad school. That means I got buck nekkid for money. Easiest job I ever had.

2. I got married when I was 22, and we'll be celebrating our fifteenth anniversary of wedded codependent bliss in a couple of weeks. (How can you not still love a man who describes your thinking matter as "your sweet and juicy chess-club brain"?) No, I wasn't knocked up when we got hitched. Yes, we still plan to tell Sam he was a shotgun baby.

3. I can eat way more chocolate than you. Don't even try to argue about this with me. You're wrong, and debating the fact demeans us both.

4. When I was seven, I liked to practise my tightrope act on the top of the fence around our pig pen. Once I fell down -- spectacularly, I might add -- and did a full body flop on the wrong side of the fence. I'm here to tell you that being entirely covered in shit isn't as bad as it sounds. So, you know, you can cross it off your list of things to dread.

5. I have wee hands and feet. I know this because strangers keep pointing it out to me.

6. I once took a two-week road trip with my best friend Suzi. We started in Vancouver and somehow ended up in Hawaii. Our adventures included a redneck in a hottub, a side trip to a desert party outside LA, and bellydancing in a Waikiki night club's dance contest. (Our runner-up prize: a bunch of dried meat products.) It's a long story.

7. My extremely judgmental side wages constant battle with the side of me that wants to be really tolerant and open-minded. Being a parent has been a severe test. On one hand, the first rule of parenting is learning to accept that every kid is different and every parent is different and that every kid-parent relationship is different and therefore what works for you and your kid may not work for another parent and kid and you need to just let go and accept that other parents know what's best for their kids even if it doesn't seem like that to you. And then there's the part of you that, despite knowing all that, still thinks putting Coca-Cola in an eighteen-month-old's bottle is just plain fucking stupid.

8. I think gay male porn looks like way more fun than straight porn.

BONUS: Random thing #9. I never stop being incredulous when I go into people's bathrooms and discover that they keep no reading material there. What if I need to be in there for a while? What if I need to make a snap judgment of your character? You've given me NOTHING.

This is the point in the festivities when I'm supposed to tag eight people, but oho, I have been down that painful road before. So rather than tag eight individuals, I tag... EVERYBODY. If you're still reading, you're obligated to share eight random things about yourself, either here or on your own site. (If it's the latter, don't forget to post a link here so I can read it.)

ETC: Blackout

Has anyone else's week been insanely busy? So busy that you might in fact describe it as IN-FUCKING-SANE? Yes? No? Maybe so? Tell me I'm not alone.

I'm leeee-aaa-ving on a jet plane (don't know when I'll be back again) tomorrow. I'm flying solo for the first time since Sam was born, and god help me, I'm giddy with anticipation. Four hours of uninterrupted reading time. Don't pinch me. Well, okay, maybe pinch me a little. You know how I like it.

I've got a stack of great books to bring with me, which almost makes up for the crushing cultural disappointment I experienced earlier this evening when 9:30 pm rolled around and I realized that I had somehow managed to MISS THE FINAL EPISODE OF AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL. This is unprecedented. In all eight seasons pardon me, cycles of the show, I've never missed a finale. If nothing else, this proves the point that I was so swearily trying to make in paragraph 1.

So I'm declaring an internet-wide blackout on all news pertaining to the conclusion of this season, until I catch the episode on a lesser network, after which we can dish to our heart's delight.

I'm serious. I don't want to hear anything. If you start talking to me about America's Next Top Model, this will be me --> LALALALALALALALALALALALA!

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

EDITED TO ADD: I would have posted what books I was planning to read on the plane, but I didn't know for sure till fifteen minutes before I left for the airport. I ended up bringing four books with me, and then I panicked at the airport and bought one more. Because what if I run out of books?!?! (Even though my trip is only four days long.)

Here's what I brought, along with a status report:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver - finished
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris - half read
Einstein's Monsters by Martin Amis - to be read
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje - to be read
After Dark by Haruki Murakami - to be read

I'm a little anxious because you'll note that I only have three books and a bit left on my pile. Should I have packed more? They have bookstores here in Ottawa, don't they?

BOOKS: Faux Real

Artist Deborah Bowness has created "Genuine Fake Bookshelf" wallpaper, based on a photograph of an actual bookcase. Can you spot the difference?

On one hand, you'll always know that the shelves on the left will never get more cluttered. On the other hand, looking at the way some of those books are leaning all a-slant -- and not being able to fix them -- would definitely get to me after a while.

[Thanks to Rebecca for the link, via BoingBoing, via OhGizmo. (My oh my, how meta can this internet get?)]

Happy Mother's Day

I'm a sucker for the traditional trappings of this most hallowed of matronly holidays. Who doesn't like sleeping in, then waking up to breakfast and a handmade card?

But I think I have a new favourite tradition: going out for dinner with some of my favourite moms, ordering way too much food (which we ate anyway), drinking perhaps more cocktails than is wise for a work night, and talking about everything under the sun, including kids, work, books, poop, infomercials, travel, pregnancy, Facebook, university boyfriends, religion, and S&M. That's what I call a Sunday night out.

However you celebrate Mother's Day, or don't, I hope you had a wonderful day.

BOOKS: Just What the Doctor Ordered

I don't know about the toddler(s) in your life, but one thing I've learned about the one in mine is this: you're not going to get him all the way through the reading of a story unless you make a complete ass of yourself. As in, such an ass that you'll make Rich Little's gig at the White House Correspondants' Dinner look like the Gettysburg Address.

Oh, Sam likes books all right. He loves them. When we come home from the library with our half dozen or so new books, he insists on reading them compulsively, back to back, until we get all the way through the stack. I don't know where he gets this from.

Perhaps I'm to blame for Sam's need for theatresports-type performances during story time. Before he became an affable toddler, back when he was officially the Grouchiest Baby in the Universe (see here and here if you're new-ish to this site), I used to pull out all the thespian stops during our readings of Green Eggs and Ham, which was -- if the fact that it was the only book in our library capable of eliciting the ghost of a polite smile from him is anything to go on -- his favourite book in the whole world.

Sam got older and perked up a bit, but Dr. Seuss has continued to be a mainstay of our pre-naptime and -bedtime repertoire. These days, we're reading McElligot's Pool and If I Ran the Zoo twice a day, and with the umpteenth-gazillion reading under our belt, I'm now prepared to tell you why McElligot's Pool is possibly the best book in the world to read to toddlers:

1. The illustrations are awesome. This book was published in 1947, making it one of Seuss's earlier works, and what I like about the artwork is that it hasn't yet become the very simplified style Dr. Seuss is widely known for, in books such as Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. (Don't get me wrong: These books are great.) The art in McElligot's Pool is much softer and alternates between black-and-white and full-colour spreads and it's just lovely to look at.

2. The story, also, is awesome. It's about a boy named Marco who's fishing in a little pond that's filled with garbage. He's just minding his own business when he gets this unsolicited commentary from a passing yokel:

The nerve! But is Marco nonplussed? Is he chagrined? Does he reply rudely? No, no, and no. Our young hero, using a stream of logic right out of 12 Angry Men, sets out a scenario in which -- the universe being the random and almost infinite place that it is -- it's quite possible that, in fact, he could catch ANYTHING in McElligot's Pool. It's wonderful.

3. The words and rhymes lend themselves perfectly to reading aloud, especially with the aforementioned theatrics that my home life demands. As Marco theorizes about the increasingly fantastical creatures he could catch -- some whimsical, others dark and weird -- the reader gets to have fun with the entire range of human expression. Good times!

4. And as an addendum to 3) but worthy of note to anyone who knows they will be reading a book until the words and meter are permanently imprinted onto their brain, McElligot's Pool is eminently re-readable. Thank god. It's not just that the illustrations and story are so well done: it's that Dr. Seuss, in all his boundless mercy toward the parents of pre-schoolers, has given us so many ways of reading the words. You can play with emphasis and tone almost endlessly, meaning YOU CAN LOOK LIKE AN ASS IN AN ALMOST INFINITE NUMBER OF WAYS. It's wonderful.

I haven't talked about the other book in heavy rotation at our house: If I Ran the Zoo. Now, here's the thing about If I Ran the Zoo: Sam obviously loves this book, and I like most of it, too, but my goodness, the times sure have changed since 1950, when it was published. The people of Ma-Tant, with "their eyes all a-slant"? The rhyme scheme on the page about the Russian bird, where all the rhyming words end in "-ski"? It's not politically incorrect... exactly. Just kind of awkward in our post-PC times.

Apropos of nothing, though, did you know that Seuss was credited with inventing the word "nerd" in this book? Well, now you do. Don't say you never learned anything here.

LIST: What's REALLY on Your Playlist?

You know how everyone's always posting what's on their iPod playlists, and it's always a list of cool, eclectic music that shows their awesome range of taste and, by extension, illustrates what a hip, open-minded person they must be? Well, I don't have an iPod. And at the rate at which I adopt new technologies, I expect that my first MP3 player will be one of Sam's cast-offs when he's in junior high school.

So, because of the dearth of music-related gadgetry in my life, I have to rely on a tool that people have been relying on since the dawn of time. And so I bring you...

My Playlist, Comprised of Annoying Tunes That Play of Their Own Accord Inside My Head
"Sussudio" - Phil Collins
"What About Love" - Heart
"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" - Anonymous Eliphalet Oram Lyte (Whoops. Didn't realize this was a sore spot for some.)
"I Will Always Love You" - Whitney Houston*
That song from that commercial
"Sunglasses at Night" - Corey Hart
"Stand By Your Man" - Tammy Wynette**
"Safety Dance" - Men Without Hats
"I Touch Myself" - The Divinyls
"She Drives Me Crazy (Ooh Ooh)" - Fine Young Cannibals
"I Know What Boys Like" - The Waitresses
"Mighty Machines" - Theme song from the TV series Mighty Machines

These are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. If you recognize even half of them, you're wincing in sympathy right now. Or you have terrible taste in music.

So what's in rotation on your mental playlist? Tell the truth now. It's okay not to be cool some of the time.

*As with many of the other songs on this list, it's just the title that I hear being sung in my head. Over and over and over.
**I actually like this song, but good god, there's a LIMIT.

ETC: NOW Am I One of the Cool Kids?

Despite everyone's warnings, I got me one of them there newfangled "Facebook" accounts. Back when I was a young whippersnapper, we called it "Friendster" and it crashed more. That's progress for you.

At the very least, I can finally stay in touch with all my nieces and nephews.

BOOKS: Achtung, Babies

Okay, my feminist heart wants to say, "But why is this book just for boys?" But then the Wes Anderson-esque trailer is so cute it makes me relent and say, "Well, we'll just pretend it's called The Dangerous Book for Boys AND GIRLS."

Regardless of the title, I think it's great that there's a book out there that reminds us all that kids need to be kids -- and that sometimes being a kid is a little dangerous. I mean, sure, I'm having a series of small heart attacks just thinking about Sam using a home-made bow and arrow. But then I remember my own childhood spent playing on rusty farm equipment and climbing rickety ladders in various haymows, and I remind myself that I survived without too many scars.

Actually, come to think of it, I do have a lot of scars. Maybe I need to think about this some more.

BOOKS: Whining and Dining

Is it sad that my favourite cookbook these days is one designed for kids, specifically for picky eaters?

Reading this post over at Finslippy reminded me (yet again) of how lucky we are (so far) that Sam is a fairly enthusiastic and adventurous eater. Sure, he has his preferences (i.e. he would happily eat cupcakes at every meal forever and ever; fortunately, he believes muffins are cupcakes), and some days he likes some things and then snubs them the next day, but whatever. I can roll with that. He regularly enjoys such grown-up fare as catfish and roasted broccoli and butter chicken and pesto and goat cheese ravioli, and trust me, I know exactly how lucky this makes me. When I think about what a monstrously picky kid I was, I know that I'm in some kind of karmic debt here. (Oh, wait a second... it took Sam almost two years until he started consistently sleeping through the night. Ka-ching! Debt repaid!)

I was F-I-N-I-C-K-Y. (That spells "pain in the ass," by the way.) You tell me how picky you were as a kid, and I will top your story. I hated eggs, dairy, and pretty much every form of protein. I hated every single vegetable known to man, with the exception of canned peas. I even hated widely reknowned kid staples, such as Campbell's soup and Kraft Dinner (or as you Yankees call it, er... what do you call it?) and pre-sweetened breakfast cereal and pizza and cheese and cold cuts and ketchup. I felt a powerful kinship with Mikey from that Life commercial, except I couldn't understand how a cereal that tastes like cardboard could bend his supposedly iron will.

I have no idea why I was so picky. I think part of it was that I just didn't feel hungry most of the time. I was on the runty side, so two tablespoons of anything was the equivalent of a nine-course Christmas dinner. And part of it was that most things just didn't taste good. (Except for dessert. Sweet, life-giving dessert.) But, lucky for me, I was never pressured to eat, and food was never made into a big issue, so I got over my aversions on my own and now I love all kinds of food.

But recapping my troubled culinary past perhaps explains the time when Sam was around six months old and I almost started crying during a sudden panic attack when I realized that I was soon going to have to face the fact that Sam couldn't live exclusively on breast milk until he left for university, and that I was going to have to find other food for him to eat. And someday I was going to have to pack him little lunches to take to school and whatnot and OH MY GOD WHAT DO SIX-YEAR-OLDS LIKE TO EAT? Because in my experience, six-year-olds like to eat air. And the odd canned pea.

So, fast-forward to the present, and every mealtime (almost) I'm so relieved and grateful that Sam will usually eat at least one or two items on the menu. But there's part of me thinking, It seems wrong to keep feeding him the same dozen things over and over again and not make the most of the fact that he's such a good eater. OH MY GOD WHAT DO YOU FEED AN EPICUREAN TODDLER?

Parenting = A neverending series of no-win scenarios

So I came across this book, Whining and Dining: Mealtime Survival for Picky Eaters and the Families Who Love Them. It's the first cookbook for toddlers I've ever consulted, and I thought that the fact that it's geared toward finicky eaters would mean that the recipes would be extra delicious. I was right.

I love this cookbook. I want it to be my boyfriend, and someday we're going to get married and have two babies, a boy and a girl, but in the meantime I'm going to write our names together on my Trapper-Keeper for all the world to see because our love is real and true and I don't care who knows it. That's how much I love this cookbook. I LOVE IT.

The authors, Emma Waverman and Eshun Mott, claim that their book, which contains more than a hundred recipes, will provide help and inspiration for parents of picky eaters. Now, in the couple of weeks since this book entered my house, I've come to love it deeply, as I believe I may already have alluded to, but as I've become intimate with the recipes therein, I must confess to being a little skeptical about their ability to win over truly, insanely picky eaters such as the Child Doppelganger. As delicious as I now find the dishes I've prepared from Waverman and Mott's instructions, I can tell you with some degree of certainty that I would never have allowed their pad thai ("too ketchup-y") past my lips. Ditto their fajitas ("too many different things all together"), their turkey and bean chili ("too lumpy"), their quick chicken curry ("too smelly"), their carrot bran muffins ("carrots in MUFFINS? Ew!"), and their mushroom and spinach frittata ("excuse me, this is a joke, right?").

But having said all that, there are a few items I probably would have deigned to chew and swallow, things like their buttermilk pancakes, home fries, and chicken fingers. In other words, the white, bland foods that notoriously picky eaters are famous for liking. To Waverman and Mott's credit, their versions of these foods are some of the best I've tasted, making this cookbook worthwhile even if these are the only recipes you ever use.

Speaking of which, I don't know how many recipes make a cookbook purchase worthwhile for you, but for me it's three. If I get three recipes that become mainstays in my cooking repertoire, I consider the book worth the investment. So far, with Whining & Dining, I've made ten dishes, and with the exception of the couscous salad (which Rusty and Sam didn't care for, but I loved), they're all keepers. That's pretty incredible, especially when you realize that there are three different people to please here, and we all have strong opinions about what we like.

Of course, I made the picky eater hall-of-fame dishes: the aforementioned buttermilk pancakes, home fries, and chicken fingers with homemade honey-mustard sauce. The pancakes were lovely. (Using buttermilk really makes a difference.) I adapted the recipe for home fries slightly and tossed the potatoes in olive oil and curry powder rather than madras paste (only because we didn't have madras paste in the house), but they turned out perfect just the same. The chicken fingers were AWESOME. I used free-range chicken, because that's the only way we roll around here, and I think that the extra thickness of the free-range breasts is the reason why I had to cook the chicken fingers much longer than the recommended minute-and-a-half on each side. (I'm a bit neurotic about undercooked chicken, so it's a good thing we all like our food a little crispy.)

I got a bit more adventurous with pasta e fagioli, a recipe which may not have been exactly true to Rusty's Italian roots, but was pretty tasty anyway. On the international tip, I also tried my hand at chicken satay with peanut sauce, and seriously, it was the best chicken satay I've ever had. (Note: I give the recipe, not myself, all the credit.) I also learned how ridiculously easy it is to make your own refried beans, which is good because Sam loves them and I only recently learned that most canned brands are apparently chock full of trans fats.

Since I love baking, the baked goods chapter of this book is probably my favourite part. So far, I've made the banana chocolate oatmeal bread and the blueberry cornmeal muffins, which even Rusty likes, despite his lifelong aversion to cornbread ("too grainy"). What I appreciate about this section of this book is the similarity between my baking philosophy and that of the authors: basically, we agree that we'd like to cut down on unnecessary sugar, but not to the detriment of flavour. We also agree that a little bit of chocolate is A-OK. To that end, they provide chocolate-free alternatives, and their recipes for cakes and muffins contain much less sugar than you'd expect without sacrificing taste.

What really makes me happy about this book is that it's inspired me to branch out and try new recipes from my other cookbooks, too, and I think all of us -- and especially Sam -- are enjoying the new diversity in our diets. I hadn't realized we were in a bit of an eating rut (which is pretty common during a "shoulder season" like spring, when good, fresh produce is thin on the ground and grocery stores can be less than inspiring). I feel like we're out of the rut now and well on our way toward summer, a season that always makes me excited about food.

And now I'm hungry.

BOOKS: Three Things I Didn't Know About Shel Silverstein

1. Shel Silverstein shopped his now-classic children's story The Giving Tree around to dozens of publishers before he found one who would take a chance with this book, which was considered either "too short" or "too sad" by most.
2. Shel Silverstein co-wrote a film, Things Change, with David Mamet.
3. Shel Silverstein wrote the lyrics to the Johnny Cash hit "A Boy Named Sue" (which coincidentally also happens to be Sam's favourite Cash tune).

Did you know these things? I didn't! And now you can learn about them -- and more! -- at ShelSilverstein.com!

[Thanks to Rusty for the link, though he gives the credit to Metafilter.]

BOOKS: What Do I Know. I'm Just a Book Blogger.

I just read this article in The New York Times, which discusses the fact that the literary sections of print newspapers seem to be on the slow road out of town, what with the popularity of book blogging and all.

To some authors and critics, these moves amount to yet one more nail in the coffin of literary culture. But some publishers and literary bloggers — not surprisingly — see it as an inevitable transition toward a new, more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books.

Well, first off, I call shenanigans on that first sentence. From where I'm sitting, literary culture looks pretty healthy. Admittedly, my only way of gauging this is via the masses of excellent-looking books sitting on my to-read pile, as well as by the fact that I get to talk with all you nice folks out there every day about nothing but books, books, books. That's got to mean something, right?

Moving on to my main point, though, I've never really thought about sites like mine out-and-out replacing traditional media. Though, come to think of it, with the exception of The Times, I don't actually read print media as it relates to books. Why not? Well, this bit from the article pretty much sums it up:

Edward Champion, who writes about books on his blog, Return of the Reluctant (edrants.com), said that literary blogs responded to the "often stodgy and pretentious tone" of traditional reviews.

Over a year ago, I said pretty much the same thing, but I used a lot more words:

Because they appear on the printed page alongside articles about world events and local news, book reviews have somehow got it in their head that they are pieces of journalism. As such, writers of book reviews dwell in sensory deprivation tanks where their analysis of each book they read can percolate in a bubble of hermetically sealed objectivity.

Now, out here in the real world where a few of us live, books are read under slightly different conditions: while standing on buses, in hurried snatches in doctors' waiting rooms, while waiting anxiously for a phone call after a job interview, on beaches with a glass of sangria wedged firmly in the sand next to your towel, blurry-eyed by the light of the nightlight while rocking a teething baby.

Books are also obtained in different circumstances that affect our emotional response to them: as gifts from beloved friends or pass-alongs from hated co-workers, as found objects in rental cabins, in the mail from the bloody book-of-the-month club you keep forgetting to cancel, in the bowels of a used bookstore after years of searching.

There are a thousand other factors that make our experience of a book highly subjective: a dislike of certain authors and genres, a tactile distaste for hardcovers or for paperbacks, an irrational prejudice against a character because they share a name with someone you loathe, and even -- yes, it's true -- a visceral reaction to a book's cover.

So why, then, the pretense of objectivity, a pretense that's all the more ironic and unnecessary given that book lovers are the first people you can rely on to appreciate and understand -- and enjoy -- the environmental and emotional factors that colour your experience with a book?

Here's another thing about so-called book reviews: why is it so damn hard for reviewers just to come out and say if the book was good or not? Really, isn't that kind of the point of a book review? I don't need to read an essay that proves how clever you are. I just want to read enough of your writing to know if you're clever enough to trust with my next reading decision, then give me a yay or nay. Is that so hard? It seems like too many book reviewers are writing for the benefit of other book reviewers, or for publishers, or for some imaginary English prof who haunts their laptop. Somehow, the actual readers get lost in the crowd.

I still stand by all that, but it's not surprising that some folks in the literary community aren't thrilled about the rise of book blogging and the dearth of "real" criticism:

Coming as it does at a time when newspaper book reviews are endangered, many writers, publishers and critics worry that the spread of literary blogs will be seen as compensation for more traditional coverage. “We have a lot of opinions in our world,” said John Freeman, president of the National Book Critics Circle. "What we need is more mediation and reflection, which is why newspapers and literary journals are so important."

Sure, maybe. Though it's interesting to me that, in a community where credentials are hazy and experts seem largely to be self-appointed (in both the print and online worlds), it doesn't seem to have occurred to critics of book blogs that book bloggers might also be capable of "mediation and reflection."

I'm not dancing on the grave of mainstream media. It seems like there are opportunities here... opportunities for newspapers and journals to look to the online literary community and see what makes it so dynamic and satisfying, and then apply these qualities to their own publishing. Like, would it be too horribly demeaning to write in a colloquial, reader-friendly way? Would it be so absolutely awful to publish reviews online and, gasp, allow readers to comment on them? Would it be utterly pointless to let reviewers write about books that aren't current releases?

The internet allows for so many things that print does not: immediacy, interactivity, hyperlinking. I think it's possible for a forward-looking journal publisher to take advantage of all these qualities and still retain its editorial integrity. But what do I know. I'm just a book blogger.

Stupid Books That I Have Read and Forgotten but Would Totally Read Again (Despite the Fact That They Are, As I've Already Mentioned, Stupid)

Apropos of nothing... oh, no, the nerds are rioting! Someone wake me up if they get too close to here, okay?

Anyway. Back to this post title.

You know what I'm talking about. Don't pretend you don't. That stupid book you read because you were staying at a B&B or something and it was on the room's meagre bookshelf and you couldn't NOT read it because god knows when a copy of Mistral's Daughter or whatever was going to come your way again. And of course you inhaled it in four hours and it was AT LEAST as spectacularly stupid as you expected it to be. And then, years and years and years later, you couldn't get some aspect of the ridiculously arcane plot out of your head, and now you'd give anything to read this book again, just to see if it's actually as dumb as you remember. But you can't, because not only can you not remember the author's name, you can't even remember the title.

Here is a mere sampling of the myriad plots swirling around the lost recesses of my brain at any given time. Pity me.

UPDATE: Titles! Thanks to you guys! And links! Courtesy of me! (In case you're crazy enough to want to read these, too.)
Stupid Book #1 The Sendai by William Woolfolk
If I recall correctly, this book starts off with a series of stories about a bunch of babies who are born of women who sought treatment at a fertility clinic. In each case, the babies are huge, weighing something like 14 or 15 lbs at birth. And they're covered with hair and have strangely simian demeanours and subnormal intelligence. Someone -- a doctor? a family friend of one couple with such a child? a cop? -- uncovers this string of "coincidences" and begins a secret investigation of the clinic. Their hunt for clues and information gets increasingly dangerous (there may be some unfortunate "accidents" along the way), until they end up in the top-secret subterranean labs beneath the clinic, where they learn -- da-da-DA! -- about a series of grotesque genetic experiments. I can't remember how the book ends, but man, you'd think I would, huh?

Not ringing any bells? How about this one:

Stupid Book #2 The Killing Gift by Bari Wood
So it's the 1950s and a pair of rich young newlyweds are on their honeymoon. They get into a car accident, and the woman needs a bunch of X-rays. Unbeknownst to her or the doctors, she's newly pregnant, and the radiation put out by this newfangled X-ray gizmo jangles up the developing embryo's DNA real good. Fast-forward a few years to the young family: father, mother, and happy, normal little girl. OR IS SHE? Something about her is... different. Could it be the fact that she has the power to KILL PEOPLE WITH HER MIND?

The rest of the book follows her through to adulthood. As a middle-aged woman, her husband is killed by robbers during a botched home invasion. The robbers both die of mysterious causes that mystify forensics experts. A senior detective is called in to investigate, and he soon hones in on the woman. As he gets closer to the truth, he realizes that he has three choices: walk away, risk death himself in arresting the woman, or convince her to use her power to work with him to take down the worst criminal elements in the city.

Well, what would you do?

Stupid Book #3 The Mask by Dean Koontz
Er. My memories of this one are pretty sketchy, even by my standards. Something about a young girl being trapped in a cellar, and she's terrified of the spiders in it, and then the house catches fire and she dies? And then years later, she's reincarnated, and this new incarnation has amnesia and doesn't know where she's come from? And she doesn't know that she apparently has some sort of destiny to fulfill, involving killing the woman who's taken her in? And, er, there's maybe something about a cat that goes nuts and attacks his elderly owner?

I may be confusing that last detail with another book. It would seem I've read a lot of crap.

Can you help me out with any of these? It's okay. I'll respect your need to maintain anonymity.

BOOKS: That's a-maze-ing!*

Anyone who's read Carol Shields's novel Larry's Party will know that the titular character is a specialist in labyrinths, and that labyrinths and mazes provide the thematic backdrop for the novel. What you might not know is that this is one of my all-time favourite novels, for reasons that are hard for me to pin down and explain. In fact, I love this book so much that I had one of the maze designs that begins each chapter tattooed on my back.

And that's why this article made me very happy:

Organizers of an unconventional tribute to beloved Canadian author Carol Shields are set to break ground in Winnipeg on Monday.

The late author's family, friends and fans will gather in the city's King's Park for a lunchtime sod-turning ceremony before construction of the Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth.

I may need to make a pilgrimage to Winnipeg. Road trip! Who's with me?

*I'm so sorry. No one's more disappointed in me than me.