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Wow, this book took me forever to read. M.G. Vassanji’s epic story of Vikram Lall, a Kenyan-born Indian man who rises up through the ranks to become the country’s most wanted, won the Giller in 2003. As much the story of a post-colonial Kenya and its struggle for independence as the story of Vic’s life, the book covers roughly forty years, following the protagonist from youth to middle-age.

Vassanji interweaves the story of Vikram Lall, his family and some close friends with the social and political changes in Kenya before, during and after independence. Mainly Vic’s voice is used as a gateway to the stories of his sister Deepa and Njoroge (the love of her life and an African), and the Lall extended family (grandparents, parents, Mahesh Uncle). The history of Vikram is both physically (his grandfather was a labourer who built the railroad) and metaphorically (how he finds himself ‘in-between’ worlds despite being born an African) tied to Kenya. Vassanji relays this in many ways, through the amount of detail paid to everyday life in Africa, the food they ate, the places they went, the life they led, as well through the distance the narrator keeps from both what he’s seeing and the life he lived.

It’s a difficult book to read for that very reason. So much of the story is told at arm’s length, something I’m sure my creative writing class would cut apart, but it works on so many levels that keep the epic scope of the book tied so closely with the experiences of one man who absolutely refuses to experience anything fully.

In the end, I’m glad I read it because I am deeply interested in the perspective of life in Africa during the time after the British empire disbanded its colonial stronghold, and the book’s bittersweet tone will probably have me thinking about it for days afterwards. And not just because I’m stuck at home being sick and tired and spaced out.

So today I learned that my gorgeous new bag has another use: it’s big enough to hold the “sample” of the 24-hour urine test I had to do this week. What a quiet irony to my life. I mean, hell, if I have to go to the hospital with a day’s worth of pee, it might as well be in style.

We all know this already. But how hilarious is it that some kid is heading to California for the summer and has no idea what his job will be? Honestly? That makes me want to apply to work for Google right now. Mystery jobbers like mystery shoppers, maps of everything, scanning books, developing offline ‘solutions’, where’s it all going to end?

Do you think Google would hire me? A semi-sick, semi-blogger with good writing skills and a mad love for the internet?

David Bach’s “Finish Rich” philosophies, appearances on Oprah and well-timed practical advice have made him a superstar. I read one of his books last year and found it more profoundly annoying than anything. Plain common sense wrapped up in cute buzz words and self-discipline. But I like to read money books, or rather, books about how to manage your personal finances (maybe because money manager is my self-appointed role in our marriage), so I read The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner in about thirty seconds.

It’s a practical book that explains mortgages and all the other good stuff involved in utilizing real estate as an investment. I was looking for some solid advice as to how to own (or plan to own) a vacation home (cottage, condo in Paris, ah, dare to dream) but the book’s not really about that. It’s primary message? You have to live somewhere so you might as well own where you live. It’s secondary message? Don’t sell your first house, but rent it out if you can afford to. See, good, practical advice.

But my biggest problem with the book and with the cookie-cutter approach to finance that so many of these self-appointed ‘gurus’ proport to have remains the lack of a holistic approach to money management. Resources are looked at in terms of dollars and cents, and not in a more ‘what am I contributing to the world’ point of view. Not that David Bach is an anti-environmentalist (he often has chapters on charity and giving), but so far in my life I’ve only read one book about money management that looked at the human costs as well. Sam Lamb lent me the book and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called, but I’d like to go back and read it again, just to be reminded that every dollar you earn has a true physical cost attached to it, and that’s worth something far more than the interest ING Direct is paying me on my life savings.

In the end, I’ll still read books about money management, still be annoyed by them, take what I need and be glad that I spent the two hours learning (or being reminded) of how finance works, because it’s important. But I’ll always be doing it with the idea in the back of my mind that I’d love to end up a poor, starving novelist one day, if only I could dare myself to give up the stability of a two week paycheque and the small comforts of cable television.

The OED word of the day? Twelve-incher.

Am I wrong to see the humour in the first definition being: “Something that measures twelve inches in length, diameter, height, etc.; spec. (a) a cannon with a bore of twelve inches; (b) a twelve-inch record.”

Heh. A “cannon” with a “bore” of “twelve inches.” Heh.

An interesting article on CBC Arts talks about the idea of adult-to-YA crossover with some popular fiction, books like The Girls, Life of Pi, Curious Incident. The article sort of gives me a bit of hope in terms of a book I’m working on right now. The story of four young women in Banff, Alberta, I’m finding the more I write it, the more it comes out YA fiction. And I can’t really tell if that’s a bad thing or not?

Yet, the books that impacted me most when I was a child were definitely not kids books. Or maybe that’s because I’m thinking of my YA reading days as being in high school, past my Sweet Valley High stage, past the only ever writing stories about twin sisters stage, past Little House on the Prairie (well, well past) and Little Women, past SE Hinton (oh, Ponyboy, I still have you in my scrapbook), and past the beloved Judy Blume, where I devoured Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, Margaret Atwood and Salinger.

But there’s one fact that the article seems to overlook, it’s not that YA crossover books are a new phenom, it’s just that now publishers are actively marketing them as such. For years, girls that I knew, voracious readers all, were dipping into their mother’s libraries and reading well above their age level. All the boys I knew read like mad and recommended much of what made my everyday bus ride bearable. Give the kids some credit, they’re finding The Girls et al because they’re great books, great books that deserve a chance regardless of your age group. Having it now somewhat defined as ‘trend’ seems to demean the entire idea of kids coming into their own when it comes to literature. Something they’ve been doing for generations, well, at least since my generation.

We got a Faux-Tivo, forever known as our Faux-Vo, from Rogers about two weeks ago. It’s a little revolution in a box. And there’s no going back now. We had to agree to the damn thing for two years just to bring the price down to something remotely reasonable.

So in my absolute fit of Faux-Vo-ing everything, I’ve been watching Related, a cheese-ass WB drama about four sisters living in Manhattan. You may have read Scarbie talking about the same show. As it’s a show my RRHB would never, ever in a million years let me watch while he was in the country let alone in the house, Faux-Vo and sick leave make for perfect Related bed partners.

I have just one question: why is it that a fight about cheating (one sister kissed an old boyfriend before leaving and confessing everything to her new boyfriend, who (BTW) only became her lover after they both cheated on their boss) can take a nano-second to complete? The entire fight, from beginning to end, took about two minutes. That’s fighting, pouting and making up all in a flash of one hundred and twenty seconds. It’s a bloody record.

Annnnywaaay. If that same fight happened in my house, and mind you, it hasn’t, no illicit kissing, but a lot of other stupid fights, it would go ten rounds starting at midnight, last well into the next day and then charge again just when the dust settled. Ah, the magic and power of television, er, or the WB.

Oh, and can you tell I’m addicted to the Faux-Vo already?

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Those few days without the internet to waste my time and being home from work because we’re still trying to find my blood, means I’m not racing around like a maniac living my life.

On March 21st, I see the super-fancy disease doctor. At that point, I’m sure he’ll put me on yet another medicine for the disease, which will inevitably have serious side effects. The prednisone I’ve been taking for the last two weeks has started to kick in. My cravings for extremely bad food have started (I won’t give in! I won’t give in!) and I’m a bit puffy. The really fun stuff like the acne (face, chest, back) hasn’t started yet and neither has a lot of the water weight, so those are positive things.

But what’s weighing my mind down isn’t whether or not I’m dying from the disease (because I’m not) but more how I need to change my life in order to deal with its presence. Change is hard regardless of how it comes about. Whether it’s forced or whether you force it upon yourself, it always involves pain, pressure and release (metaphorically, of course).

So now I’m kind of at a crossroads. I have a good job that I’m not necessarily well enough to do but I don’t know if I’m sick enough to stay home. And then there’s the guilt: the guilt about taking care of myself, the guilt about getting paid but not working, the guilt about just staying home if I really need to. In the end, much depends on what the super-disease doctor says next week. I guess maybe he’ll force my hand, and change is on the horizon.

Now, I’m not an editor, but I do work at a publishing company. Does that make this purchase any less self-indulgent? Perhaps not, but I bought the damn bag anyway.

I consider it the evolution of Ragdoll. Up until now, I’d been using knapsack for just about everything: purse, carry-on, carry all. And with my impending “scary” birthday, I thought that maybe it was time to grow up and buy a serious bag. It was way, way too much money though, and I’m suffering a bit with the guilt. Oh, but only until I look at my gorgeous bag and then all the bad feelings just sort of go away.

I’ve been off sick from work the past week trying to find my blood. Er, well, finding the energy to try and find my blood might be a more adequate way of putting it. I spent most of the mornings at home puttering because we didn’t have a computer until today (yay!). The prednisone, in addition to making my cheeks puffy, is now keeping me awake. So, I get up around 6 AM and can’t get back to sleep. There’s only so much television you can watch, only so long you can sit on the couch before you think, “a walk might be good.” Or “maybe I can handle a matinee today.”

So I saw Match Point, which I found deeply sexist and kind of frustrating. Granted it’s Woody Allen’s best picture in years and I can see why so many critics liked it. I don’t want to give away any spoilers so I’m going to leave it at the fact that despite the overarching comparisons to Crime and Punishment and more than adequate performances the movie still falls flat.

Okay, well, I’m going to say one thing, if you’ve seen Unfaithful, then you can probably guess the part of the film that totally annoyed me. In the end, I crave emotional conflict on the screen, and the film never really gave it to me. It was nuanced and from an interesting perspective, but felt a bit outdated in terms of both the characterization (yawn Scarlett Johansson) and the dialogue.

Yesterday I went to go see Failure to Launch. Oh. Boy. By the end, I was kind of charmed, but all in all, it’s a totally mediocre film too.

Annnywaaay. While I was waiting for my friend before seeing Allen’s film, I browsed through the local bookstore in the mall. To this day, I’d never actually seen any of the Classic Starts in the store, and I have to admit, it was kind of thrilling seeing some copies of my own books up there on the shelves for kids to discover and their parents to (hopefully) buy. In fact, it was more than kind of thrilling, it was pretty damn cool.