Guh-gung

I have this terrible habit of finding certain things terribly funny in theory, but not considering the long-term consequences of following through on my actions. For example, when I was #143 on the holds list for Patrick Swayze's posthumous autobiography Time of My Life, it was a funny story. But that hold was going to come in sometime, and that sometime is today, and now, with all the books in my life to be read, I've got to add Time of My Life to the teetering stack. A book with such lines as, "It felt like an electric charge suddenly coursed through my body. I looked into Lisa's eyes, and it was as if I was seeing her for the first time. We moved together as one, and I felt a stirring deep in my soul." And then a few pages on, he woos her to the sounds of Bread's "Baby I'm-a Want You." When they finally have sex on page 46, "it was like a dam had broken and the flood came rushing in."

This is either going to be the best book ever, or the worst.

On The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Though I suspect my aversion to all things science-fiction/ fantasy might be genetic, I can also trace it to having to watch a cartoon version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe during one rainy indoor recess back in grade one. That witch, the way one character spoke about "strangers in these woods", what a strangely terrifying thing is whatever is "turkish delight", and then when they cut the lion's mane off! I remember it all vividly, and with such a frisson of horror (and don't even get me started on the indoor recess where we watched The Neverending Story and the horse drowning in the quicksand).

I've had a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe sitting on my shelf for a while now, and this weekend I finally got around to reading it. Because it's a children's classic, and you can't judge a book based upon a cartoon adaptation you watched when you were six (as the adage goes). And I can see why I was creeped out all those years ago, but I did enjoy it and will pass it along to Harriet to read when she is bigger. Christian allegory or not, it was an absorbing story, I loved the role of the Professor who confirms that Narnia is not just the children's fantasy, the obtrusive narrator, the complicating nature of Edmund's treachery, connections to Lewis Carroll and Wonderland, and idea of a world where it is always winter and never Christmas (which sounds a little like February).

It was an absorbing story indeed. If I were ever to give advice on how to start a novel, I'd advise a writer to have a character discover a secret world ("ok, I'm intrigued), explore it, and very quickly return back and then discover the world's portal has shut ("ok, I'm reading this book to the end now just to figure out what this is all about"). It's a double-bait, and it's excellent.

I'm also now thinking much about book titles that are itemized lists of what the book contains. There are plenty with one item, many with two, but how many others with three items? (Off the top of my head, I can only think of an old YA book called Maudie, Me and the Dirty Book.) Such a title would hardly be inspired, would it? Though alliteration certainly works in its favour here.

I don't imagine I'll be reading further chronicles of Narnia, because not being a small child, I've come to these books much too late. But I'm glad I finally read this one, particularly in order to discover that (SPOILER ALERT) Aslan doesn't die!! Or he is reincarnated, or... something. I don't know how I missed that during Indoor Recess. Perhaps I was so traumatized by him being shorn of his mane that I missed the rest of the film? Nevertheless, I was much relieved by this happy ending.

There is no excuse

There is no excuse for the accompanying photo, except that my baby is adorable. Alright then, bookishly. I thumbed through the new Pierre Trudeau biography the other day, and now I am afraid I'm the only woman in Canada who never slept with him. He didn't even want me to live with him and have his child, like Liona Boyd (who is Liona Boyd?) on the cover of Hello. This may or may not be unfortunate. I just finished reading What Boys Like by Amy Jones (review forthcoming!) and have just started Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the "Experts". Patricia has directed my attention to what seems to be the worst picture book ever: The Mischievous Mom at the Art Gallery by "high-octane duo" Rebecca Eckler and Erica Ehm. A new level of narcissism-- we have to be reflected in our kids' books now? "Finally — a picture book for the Starbucks-armed, BlackBerry-checking, gym-going working mother." Perhaps you're meant to read it on the treadmill. Chapters/Indigo includes a "Green Matters" option on its online catalogue, narrowing searches to books printed on FSC/Recycled Content. On the best Sesame Street songs (in honour of the show's fortieth birthday). They forgot ladybug picnic. Charlotte on The Children's Storefront, a neighbourhood institution that was lost in a fire last week. Rona Maynard's secrets to decades upon decades of marriage. I've been enjoying books/music site Sasquatch Radio. WriterGuy directed me towards the interesting "How Waterstones killed bookselling" (in light of my recent post about how Waterstones killed book buying, for me, at least). And I'm wondering if I'm the only one who starts carrying around my next book to be read once the current read is down to the last fifty pages or so. Indeed, if I don't have something fabulous to read within arm's length at all times, I do start to get a little nervous.

A tough time with popular fiction

Perhaps I've finally gotten clever, or the world's gotten dumber, and I'm not sure which, but either way, I am having a tough time with popular fiction. Last Thursday, once again, I had to abandon a novel for being complete and utter crap. For being sloppy, poorly edited, not completely making sense, being implausible, and patronizing in that it was expecting me not to notice. At first, as I was struggling through, I put it down to the last three books I'd read before it having been difficult but also extraordinary, and maybe popular fiction in general just doesn't bring the same return on investment. But no, actually. I've read some fine popular fiction this past while, that might not have demanded much of me as a reader but it didn't ask me to kindly avert my eyes while it turned into a train wreck of a book either.

I feel that as a writer myself, who has written two significantly flawed (albeit not without their virtues but still, there is a good reason they're unpublished...) novels, and many utterly awful short stories, maybe I'm just better attuned to a crappy book than the average reader. "Oh, I see what the writer did there," I find myself thinking, and I wonder: why didn't an editor pick up on this? Or do they still have editors? Perhaps they disappeared when the bottom fell out? And if so, could someone please get them to come back?

This post is far more grumpy than my usual fare, but I was annoyed. My reading time is hard-fought for these days. As I've noted already, I'm trading my daughter's development of positive sleep habits for time to read, as I allow myself to be napped on, but her naps don't come easy. And how will I answer when she grows up to ask me what I have to show for the shitty novels for which she sacrificed the ability to fall asleep anywhere but on her mother's chest?

Or maybe I'm just crazy. Because I go searching the internet to validate my opinions, and I find that crappy novel of the day has received a glowing review in the New York Times (though never, I note, from Michiko Kakutani). And when I do blog searches, I find readers loving the stuff. There is usually a note, also, that says, "Would be great for book clubs." Which, really, says nothing very good about book clubs.

I don't think I'm crazy though. The UK papers tend to hate the books I do, and there is always a dissatisfied blogger for every enamoured one. Which goes to show, I suppose, that we all expect very different things from the books we read, but sometimes I do wish readers might expect a little more. And that editors would too, and publishers, and authors of themselves?

But, as Caroline Adderson once wrote (and I love this quote): ""Of course, the best antidote to the disappointment of the literary life is to read." And I managed much consolation with a weekend spent with The Sweet Edge by Alison Pick and Tokyo Fiancee by Amelie Nothup, both of which I can earnestly recommend.

Books Without Which

Here is a list of books without which I would have had to imagine up my own anxieties throughout my pregnancy. Thankfully, however, these works came with their own inspiration.

• The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff: Willie Upton returns to her hometown "in disgrace", and what happens in her pregnancy is a plot hinge I'll not here reveal, but you should read the book to find out why I thought I was crazy.
  
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: We wanted to find out our child's gender, but nobody would tell us. So ever since I've been convinced that it doesn't have one. Time will tell.
  
• Like Mother by Jenny Diski: A baby without a brain! It can happen! It happened to Diski's Frances, but she was horrid, but then sometimes I am too.
  
• The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing: The Lovett's fifth child is a monster who destroys the family, not to mention kicks the crap out of poor Harriet's womb. The perils of banking too much on domesticity and cozy kitchen tables.
  
• Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins: The pregnancy goes just fine, and baby Arlo is a dream, but the whole experience brings Ann's repressed demons back to the surface. I don't actually have repressed demons, but what if they're just really repressed?
  
• Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin. Speaking of demons. Because how can you be sure your baby is not the spawn of Satan? And I mean really sure.
  
• We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Was it nature or was it nurture? Regardless, somewhere along the line Eva went wrong, and brung herself up a high school killer. And it could happen to you (ie me).
  
• The Baby Project by Sara Ellis. I actually read this book twenty years ago, but skimmed through it recently in a book store because I thought it might be cute. No. SIDS, oh my, and then I started to cry. So the anxiety isn't going to stop with the birth, it seems. No bumpers on the crib for Baby!
  
• The Girls by Lori Lansens. I didn't read this while I was pregnant, so didn't notice the potential trauma of the birth scene, but then I gave it to a friend who was pregnant, and let's just say she was plenty relieved to see just one head and four limbs at her first ultrasound.
  
• Consequences by Penelope Lively. If I read a lot of 19th century literature, surely I'd see even more mothers dying in childbirth. Which is one reason I'm really glad that I don't read a lot of 19th century literature.
  

From the "I should have known better..." file

Do NOT read Andrew Pyper before you go to bed at night. This tip I picked up reading The Killing Circle last year, waking up in the night convinced there was somebody lurking at the bottom of my stairs, even hiding under the bed, or standing over me watching while I slept, so I was not to move a muscle. But I thought I would be safe with early Pyper, with his short story collection Kiss Me. (It had been a gift from the lovely Rebecca Rosenblum after all). And it was the story "Break and Enter" that finally did me in, so that I woke up at 2:30 this morning, not convinced the man was actually gone, the one who'd been standing over me ready to kill me in my dream. In order to shake off the fear, I then had to rouse myself into a state of wake that would last for over two hours. During which I was distracted when the baby kicked, and worried baby wouldn't kick again when it didn't. And then when I finally managed to fall back to sleep, I dreamed I was being chased by a wild boar.

I don't think he had anything to do with the boar, but still-- do NOT read Andrew Pyper before you go to bed at night.

darkness of a child's heart

"You can control and censor a child's reading, but you can't control her interpretations; no one can guess how a message that to adults seems banal or ridiculous or outmoded will alter itself and evolve inside the darkness of a child's heart."-- Hilary Mantel in The Guardian

Fits and starts

It's been a strange day, and I've got stitches in my mouth. I'm also a bit doped up, and all of it has been sort of fascinating, however awful. That I've been bored, all afternoon. And I am never bored. I firmly believe that boredom is the jurisdiction of the lazy (or of those who forget to carry at book at all times). But this afternoon I've not been able to concentrate on very much, save the daring feats of squirrels outside my window, crossing and crisscrossing the street via tightrope power lines. That I've been unable to read very much at all, can you believe it. I was reading Marilynne Robinson before, but she requires more attention and care from her readers than I have energy to offer her now. I did listen to the podcast of Lorrie Moore reading her story "Paper Losses", which is sort of wonderful, actually, as I can't think of any other day in which I would have cleared the space. In fits and starts, I've been rereading Justine Picardie's If the Spirit Moves You, which is just the ticket, I think, for my current state of mind. I also read another story today, which I hated-- the danger of linking books and experience-- mainly because I was taking out upon it my "mild discomfort". But I'm also sure it sort of sucked. And the story will therefore remind me of excruciating pain as I long as I shall live.

I am turning my evening over to the benevolent force of the DVD.

Life is too short

That I've never read Eat Pray Love doesn't mean I'm not amused by furious tirades against the book: lately, "Eat Pray Love Shut the Fuck Up" and "Eat Pray and look at me." Stephanie Nolen's blogpost: "one tiny source of levity amidst the heartbreak... the Zimbabwean flare for names." Ivor Tossell's, "They're never gonna give you up Rick Astley" is brilliant. How your home library is a real estate selling point (via Stuart, though I'm not sure why he was reading The Telegraph's property section). Though at said paper, I came across this fascinating Doris Lessing interview. The work of the great Grace Paley surveyed (and I am excited, for I'll be rereading her collected stories soon!): ""Art is too long, and life is too short... There's a lot more to do in life than just writing."

Now reading finally

I've been a bit deranged lately, and Stuart says I'm missing fiction. He keeps trying to foist novels upon me because I'm annoying to live with, but I am bloody minded and as I resolved to read six non-fiction books in a row, surely I will. I am not really convinced the derangement has to do with the non-fic anyway-- more instead with Seasonal Mania (which I do seem to come down with every single season).

Anyway, finally, after ages and ages, I am reading Guns Germs and Steel. It has been sitting on my bedside for ages-- for so long in fact that the person who lent it to me (Curtis) moved away months ago. 56 pages in, I am enthralled and learning so very much about things I can't believe I don't know or never thought to ask. Today as I read it on my lunch break, two strangers stopped me to tell me what a great book it was. Which was strange, really, because the only other time that has ever happened to me was way back when I was reading The Selfish Gene and nobody would leave me alone with it. Strange because you wouldn't think these unliterary books would be the ones to inspire such bookish enthusiasm. What to make of that?

I am wary though, as both people who stopped to rave about Guns Germs and Steel admitted they hadn't been able to get all the way through it. And both Curtis and Stuart said pretty much the same, though they enjoyed it still a great deal. Doesn't bode well though, does it? What if nobody has ever finished this book ever? And as I'm so bloody-minded, what if I end up reading it for the rest of my life?

Too much totalitarianism

This weekend was Christmas parties and bridal showers, the wonderful Bite Noodles and Rice, snow falling outside, and then some rain. Christmas cards sent, decs up, The History Boys, corn muffins and wine. I am very distracted by a variety of things, and wish the days were longer.

Book trauma again-- I have been way too immersed of late in totalitarian regimes. Now reading Villa Air Bel by Rosemary Sullivan, and I keep spouting totalitarian tidbits when I'm out in public, which is a good way to kill a mood (or at least a good one). My next non-fic pick is The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasure of Obituaries, which, though it is about death, hopefully will be lighter? Villa Bel Air is really fascinating though, and look for a review maybe Tuesday.

Claudia's room

I wish I could say that I read well as a child. That I not only precociously toted Shakespeare around, but actually read him. That I delighted in the classics: Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea. I definitely regret throwing a tantrum the year when I received Swallows and Amazons for my birthday, instead of The Truth About Stacey. I did manage some good contemporary fiction: Jean Little, Judy Blume, Norma Klein, Berniece Thurman Hunter, Betty Miles, Marilyn Sachs. And of course there was LM Montgomery, and I covetted anything at all with her name attached. But in general, my taste in books was crap. If I have children I will have to work very hard to remember that bad reading is not necessarily a lifelong affliction. Archie comics were once my heart's desire, and now I have an MA in English lit, so anyone can turn around. If I could get over The Babysitters Club, there is hope for us all. And just to show how far I've come, I give you this blog, in which a young librarian revisits the BSC novels she devoured in her youth. Her reviews are terribly funny, the books are atrocious, and the blog is addictive.

Thanks to Leah for the link.

Update: In related news, everything we ever learned from Judy Blume is profiled here.

Things fall apart

Joan Didion is not best read, I find, when one's recent grasp of good sense has been tenuous. Or perhaps she is best read in such a state, but then the reader is not so great to be around after. As I should know, having spent the last day with me. Neuroticism is contagious, but then Didion's writing is so absolutely fine-picked and lovely, it seems a shame to let it go to waste. And so I've been rereading Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and have been immersed in that world of thirty years ago where "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." It seems it's same as it ever was, and I don't know if such a constant should be reassuring or otherwise. And I am thinking differently about "On Keeping a Notebook" than I did, and "remembering the me that used to be" seems less important that it used to. And all the California bits, which seem more pressing having read Where I was From.

("You see I still have the scenes, but I could no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could even improvise the dialogue.")

Next up I will reread A Big Storm Knocked It Over, which, hopefully, will put me back in my mind.

Summer on the Shelf

I mentioned before the psychological problems books can cause me-- when I read Fight Club and became psychotic, and how prairie fiction puts the weight of the world on my shoulders. Here's a new one, though I can't blame it on the text. Remember a few weeks back when I said I was going to read Summer? I really had the best intentions, and even went and picked it off the shelf. So far so good, and I opened up the book. I was surprised by the dedication on the inside cover, by a friend who was once a best friend, and is now a friend no longer. I had forgotten the book had come from her, and to read her words and how sad they've come to be with time was positively devastating. I am not so much in the habit of losing friends, you see, and blantant proof of that loss was hard to take. And so I put the book back on the shelf where I suspect it will remain.

Summer

Myself was grappling with the problem of Tolstoy, and how I want to read Anna Karenina, but just not now while I'm returning to the world of 9-5 (which is going to cut into my reading), and I've got a too many other books I am dying to read to devote myself to such a big one. Which I guess makes it sound like I don't really care if I read Anna Karenina at all, which also might be true. But the great thing about self-discipline is that you can give it a break just to keep things fun. And so I am totally cheating for my May Classic. I'm going to read Summer by Edith Wharton, which is so tiny and not even old enough to actually qualify for my Classics Challenge, but oh well. I was inspired to read it after reading about Hermione Lee's new Wharton bio in the LRB. (As an aside, predictably I am obsessed with the LRB, which so far has led me to read with fascination about things in which I have little to no interest-- case in point Colm Tóibín on Beckett’s Irish Actors). And so that is that, which is all she said.

Take another chance on the prairies

I'm starting to read The Horseman's Graves today and I'm feeling nervous, which you might understand if you're aware of the problems I've had with prairie fiction. Prairie fiction makes me absolutely crazy.

However I was somewhat reassured by this (rave) review of the book from The Globe this past weekend. Particularly by this bit: "Though the geographical, cultural and temporal setting of The Horseman's Graves might generate comparisons to early 20th-century practitioners of "prairie realism," Baker displays little of their inclination to romance, nor does she set up the prairie landscape and community to represent oppressive forces to be succumbed to or transcended. Her judicious plotting avoids parable and object lesson, and insists that the story of these people in this place is worth telling for its own sake."

I do hope so. And I suspect my long-suffering husband hopes so too.

Chick-Lit/Lit-Fic Showdown

In this post from a couple of weeks back, I took offence at this kind of attempt to blur the chick-lit/lit fic divide. By all means chick lit deserves to thrive, but the divide is important, and essential. All lit is not created alike, said I, and when the plots of two books from different sides of the tracks are so similar, here is a chance to pinpoint what distinguishes a work of chick-lit from one of literary fiction. And I suspected the difference was language primarily, so I read both books to be sure.

The literary book was Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World, and I'm going to call the other book MVM. You can find the book's actual title by going back to my previous post, but I don't think it's fair for me to identify it and slag it off for being nothing more than what it purports to be-- chick-lit. Because the author of MVM makes no attempt to blur the lit divide. She publishes under an exclusively chick-lit imprint after all, and the genre seems to have been good to her.

Upon first glance MVM does bear a resemblance to The Post-Birthday World. In the first book, character G finds herself inhabiting two realities as she is unable to make the choice between marrying her boyfriend in Arizona, and pursuing her career in New York. Somehow she gets both options (through a wish upon a star, I believe), and hilarity ensues. In PBW, at the choice of to kiss another man or not to kiss, Irina's life splits in two and the reader follows each outcome in alternating chapters. As she is unaware of her dual realities, very little hilarity ensues, and as I wrote in my review post, what we have instead is an examination of intimacy, and the sombre reality that life is generally trying no matter which way you cut it.

I think it is unfair to compare MVM to PBW, but it wasn't my idea. And yes, my hypothesis that language is the great divide between these two novels is partially true. Partially, because that divide is a veritable grand canyon, but nonetheless. Lionel Shriver's book is a tad overwritten in places, and I did come away with a list of fourteen words I had to look up in the dictionary afterwards. Some of them were very good: post-prandial. Whereas in MVM the author does not rely so much upon words to emphasize ideas, but rather prefers to repeat phrases, in the manner of "He's funny. He's really really funny." Or preface unbelievable ideas with "Hello?", as in "The women make brunch while the men watch sports on TV. Hello, stereotype?" Which brings me to the question marks. Character G talks in permanent unspeak. Reading her first person narrative is sort of like eavesdropping upon the soliloquy of a rambling idiot.

There aren't a lot of metaphors in this book, but here's one: "I close my eyes, squeezing out the annoyance like that last drop of toothpaste". G is able to dismiss the challenges of her new life in New York with a simple "Whatever". She uses a similar ease to deal with the fact she is now inhabiting two alternate universes, consulting wikipedia to learn a bit about "quantum mechanics (whatever the hell that is)". She learns that there are many theories of alternate universes and therefore her own strange reality might have some precedent. She says, "You can't rule out something just because it can't be proven, can you? There are like a million religions and none of them can be proven!"

The PBW is quite unsentimentally full of sex, description and analysis, while MVM tends to gloss over it. I will give you a sex scene verbatim: "Afterward we go to bed and I seduce him immediately. 'That was fun,' he says afterward." Those two "afterwards" and an "immediately" in two sentences give you some sort of an idea of this books pacing, and the consideration allotted to its scenes. We have such devices as "As I sat waiting for my appointment, I thought about my entire life up till now just to get my reader up to speed without having to impart these details subtly". We learn what G's future mother-in-law thinks about her because the woman keeps expounding on G's flaws when G is standing just around the corner. We know the mother-in-law has bad taste because she is partial to orange. We know that characters are surprised when their jaws drop.

For the first two third of this book, I hated it, and I very nearly abandoned it except I thought maybe it got better. It didn't, really. I did like G's "psycho roomate" however, who was very funny, but hardly a developed character and her tricks wore thin eventually. I also liked the plot twist as G's maid-of-honour in one reality starts dating her ex-boyfriend in the other reality, and G's resentment bubbles into both worlds. However she only deals with this by ignoring her maid-of-honour altogether, which doesn't exactly make for compelling fiction. Oh, and the end? Hello, spoilers ahead! In the ends G learns that you can have it all and lives happily ever after. And (presumably) loses her best-friend/maid of honour.

This next paragraph would be diatribe on how truly crap is MVM, but I think I've made my point. PBW took me four days to read, and inspired me to think about the nature of choices, the possibility of destiny, different kinds of love and fulfillment, and what it means to share a life. I read MVM last evening and it made me depressed that such trite can pass for lit, chick or otherwise. As I said in my previous post, readers should demand better of themselves and their books.

Prairie Fiction should come with a warning label

I had book trauma this weekend. I don't mean this lightly. As I have mentioned before, reading prairie fiction sends me into despair. Which I always forget about until I've nearly finished the book and am filled with deep sadness for the human condition. And I never stopped to think that Obasan is actually prairie fiction too, as well being, well, Obasan. Which, when read following my recent Burmese prison tale rendered the world pretty bleak. And the sky was the colour of paper, and I kept staring out the window pondering the meaning of it all. So in other words I was in dire need of a good slap, and around people far too kind to administer one. Luckily life got better.

First, I'm now reading Orphan Island by Rose Macaulay which is a delightful and interesting romp. You can read the 1925 review from Time Magazine here (ain't the tinternet grand?) I've not read Macaulay's novels before, though her Pleasure of Ruins is the most beautiful book I own, and I loved her essay on English "Catchwords and Claptrap" (which you can read here). I am reading this novel on the recommendation of Decca who acknowledged it in one of her letters as a favourite. It's simply lovely.

And next up is The Post Birthday World by Lionel Shriver (who I hope to go see read at Harbourfront next week).

Second, I watched Stranger Than Fiction last night, and I can't think of the last time I enjoyed a movie so much. And it's a bookish film, but I watched it with two boys who are a little less bookish than I, and they liked it as much as I did. I found it purely enjoyable from start to finish, I didn't get bored once, and part of the reason I was so engaged was I had no idea how the plot would sort itself out. But it did perfectly, and all of us were so engrossed in the story that when we feared one character would meet an untimely (or timely, in this case, I do suppose) demise, we were out of our minds with agony. And I like a movie that allows you to care so much. Lately we've renting movies last minute with little selection, and then yelling at the screen begging the characters to off themselves so we wouldn't have to watch them any longer. So it was very nice to feel differently, and of course the bookishness was ace. Six thumbs up.

The sky is still the colour of paper, but my outlook has greatly improved.