Yes, I Am Still Reading Books

Just not being able to post about them as often, or, well, ever.

Aside, driving into daycare this morning, RRBB kept pointing at the window and saying, “snow!” He was so excited. We had so little snow all winter, and he’s been reading Duck and Goose: It’s Time for Christmas for months. Snow in April, who knew?

So, books. For a while there, I couldn’t read anything. I was stuck in my B’s at Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks (and that book still remains unfinished) and am currently half-way through Burrough’s Naked Lunch (which makes no bloody sense; I don’t care what people say about it; and it’s not remotely as good as Junkie, which I adored) and The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. But late one night after not sleeping because of the increased dose of prednisone, I managed to finish a great book by William Boyd called Restless about a young half-British woman who becomes a spy during the Second World War (#22). That restored me. I dashed off two Maeve Binchys that don’t even warrant a mention because they aren’t really “books” but more fluff to pass the time when you’re exhausted (#s 23-24) (what is up with her “character sketches in the place of actual “plot”?)…

Then in transit I read two books of poetry, Dionne Brand’s Inventory, which was really lovely and moving; and Ken Babstock’s latest, Methodist Hatchet, which was a little impenetrable for me, even though I found a few poems that took my breath away within the collection (#s 25-26). I still firmly believe that Babstock is the greatest poet of my generation, what he does with language and pacing amazes me at every turn. He also gave me the best advice about writing ever: “put some pressure on it,” and see where it goes. I love that turn of phrase, like my words are in a pressure cooker, giving off steam.

And, I’ve also read a pile of books for work for this public domain project we’re consistently working on — and have discovered that I absolutely adore George Orwell. Who would have known? His novel, A Clergyman’s Daughter, starts off almost like something Margaret Laurence would have written, and then just goes to the most interesting places. I adored it. I also found Homage to Catalonia fascinating and Burmese Days enjoyable (#s 27-29). I really didn’t like Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream at all but it put me in good mind in terms of hearing Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers in my head for days (#30).

And then we come to Save Me the Waltz (#31) by Zelda Fitzgerald. I adored this book. Sure it’s a little all over the place stylistically and a bit muddled in terms of plot, and well, something akin to character abandonment (where she introduces a bunch of characters who are never to be seen again and it’s kind of confusing) but the bits in the middle where Alabama (yes; it’s a terrible name for a main character) strives to become a ballet dancer are excellent, honest, true-to-life, and devastating when you look at the toll it takes on her as wife and a mother. The whole book looks at the struggle for women to actualize themselves when they are bound by their gender and their era, and I think it’s a real gem that deserves to be read more.

I also read The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which got better as it went along (and the whole thing with him putting plays in the middle of his book to carry the action forward was a bit much), and This Side of Paradise, which truly was amazing for a first novel (#s 32-33). And just yesterday I finished The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, and I was ridiculously surprised by how fun, witty and wickedly good it was (#34).

But before I get too carried away with all the older books that I’ve been reading through my days, I want to make sure that I note that the best book that I’ve read off my shelves in ages was The Free World by David Bezmozgis. It’s an epic book, of sorts, of a family leaving Latvia in the 1970s, landing in Rome, trying to get to the US but ending up on the way to Canada, and it’s incredible. Thoughtful, intelligent, well-written, engaging, and all kinds of other adjectives that I could list on and on — I couldn’t put it down. It’s just a great, great piece of storytelling (#35). Thank goodness I found this when I did because I was honestly about to abandon reading forever because of my Bs. But I’m determined to get through them this month so I can at least move on to my Cs…one of which includes Julia Child’s My Life in France for book club.

Oh, and speaking of which, we read Human Amusements (#36) by Wayne Johnston last month and all found it a bit lacking, wholly, so much so that there’s no point in saying any more.

Whew. Right?

Busted on the Bloor Line: Like Waves

Just like the so-called “spring,” my body can’t decide whether it’s coming or going. This month I’m back pumped up on the steroids, have finished another week of the gross Septra, and am trying desperately to maintain a little perspective. Everyone I know seems to be in a bit of dire straights. The ups and downs of life are just barreling downhill and not seeming to climb back up, so I’m spending time hugging, giving advice, hopefully being there, listening, and putting my heart out to be held by those who might need a boost or two.  Friends are important. You know who you are. I wouldn’t be here without you. I only hope that I can give a little bit of that back to you when you need it.

It’s been a relentless twenty months. TWENTY MONTHS. I can barely manage to type that out. I’m chubby and puffy and feeling more than a little prednisone-crazy these last couple weeks. I’m not sleeping, of course, but I’ve finally found my groove again when it comes to reading, and I’m going to get caught up here over the next few days. We’ve been watching some great TV, and I’ve been enjoying some BBC shows on my iPad as I ride the stationary bike in the evenings. A terrific show called The Hour. Luther, which freaked me out, and then Wallander, wherein Kenneth Branagh is perfection. It’s all to say that despite the sheer stress of the last couple weeks of feeling truly horrible yet again, I’ve managed baby steps in the right direction: biking in the basement 3-4 times a week, lots of books read, lots of time spent with the baby. Now if I could only get my body to cooperate with my mind, and make me healthy, we’d be climbing back uphill in a moment.

The other night, lying in bed, I thought that there’s so little that I can control at the moment. Not my health, not my life to an extent, and not my mind from wandering all over the place and back again. I know I put so much pressure on myself to be doing all of the things that I did before I had the RRBB. To try and keep pushing forward, to keep moving at a pace that I recognize, and I’m failing, miserably. Making myself miserable. Making my husband miserable. All the while claiming to be happy, in a sense, because I have everything in life that equals my own personal sense of happiness. The long list that I made all those years ago: a job that I enjoy (for better or for worse), a rewarding career, a family, a nice house, a solid marriage — these are all things that I value. I would be floundering without them. Yet, I’m feeling dragged down and drugged out, moody and dangerous, unable to pause for a moment and just take a deep breath — and that’s the fatigue of dealing with the disease leeching into every aspect of my life. I can get through the days. But I don’t want to, if you know what I mean.

So, my epiphany.

The big things I cannot control. I can’t will the disease away. If anything, worrying about it, being frustrated and sad, only feeds the fire. I have to find a way to just be in it without letting it completely overwhelm me. I need to make my life smaller. Not bigger. I need to change tiny things every day until I’m feeling better, more like myself. That’s the real tease of the disease — for two or three-odd days over the last few weeks, I felt alive, like myself, not dragged down in the mud, not exhausted, happy and ready to take on the challenges of life with a toddler, a job, a household. And then, bam! I’m back to feeling horrible, ill, exhausted, more tired than I’ve ever been in my life, old, old, old.

So, small changes.

Something everyday that makes me, well, me. Small changes. Big thoughts. Right?

Busted On The Bloor Line: It’s All Sorted, Right?

I have finally figured it out. Solved all of my problems. Decided to come clean. No, really. I’ve discovered a magical elixir and called it “context.” Here’s the thing… I knew it would come to me, the familiar aches and pains of change, and I’d be able to put it all into perspective.

So. You know that first year of living with someone who isn’t a roommate? How it’s terrifically wonderful and terrifically awkward all rolled up into one? For me, the adjustment to full-time life as a couple wasn’t an easy one — I was not used to having someone else around all the time. It took me months to become accustomed to my RRHB’s ways, and I’m sure it was the same for him. Our cats were fighting. We were fighting. He hated my favourite black bean soup recipe. I really disliked his sheets and pillows. There was an adjustment period. Things got better. We separated the fighting cats. I started to sleep better. We had a fabulous apartment, a terrific social life, and lots of great neighbours. We had a life. Continue reading “Busted On The Bloor Line: It’s All Sorted, Right?”

The B’s Are Getting Me Nowhere

I am on page 107 of the 700+ page opus, Cloudsplitter. I have been carrying around David Bergen’s latest novel for weeks. I have two books of Ken Babstock’s poetry on my nightstand. I have even cracked a Maeve Binchy novel (well, I started it yesterday). And nothing is sticking! It’s the first week in forever where I haven’t finished a book. What is a girl to do? I did, however, read Jules Verne’s An Antarctic Mystery for work and really enjoyed it (#21) and a whole bunch of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales.

Instead of reading lately I’ve been watching Luther. But I’m going to have to get off my butt and get passed my “B’s” at some point because there’s a whole other alphabet on my shelf that’s feeling neglected. Maybe I need to switch it up and pick up a Z or two…just to get going again.

Busted On The Bloor Line: Take A Moment

There is a marked uneasiness these days. Something isn’t quite right. I can’t trust the weather — it leaves a pit in my stomach that something is going to go horribly and absolutely wrong. It is not normal to be wearing white short-shorts in March to the sugar bush. And I’m not just talking about the sheer oddity of having no snow for an ENTIRE winter, but the fact that the world might be changing in ways that I won’t recognize as my son grows up. Continue reading “Busted On The Bloor Line: Take A Moment”

Publishing Talkback: TL’s The “Final” Chapter, Or, Shut Up Jesse Brown

I’m going to start by saying these opinions are my own. They do not reflect those of the company that I work for nor of the industry that I am in — they are mine as a reader and as a blogger.

I have composed this blog post in my mind a half-dozen times over the last few weeks. When I was on mat leave, I mistakenly thought I’d have oodles of free time to sit around reading so, I thought, I’ll subscribe to a number of magazines. Oh, how foolish — they sit, collect dust, the pile mocks me, and then I often read some of them very early in the morning on the weekends while the RRHB sleeps, and the RRBB and I hang out. In the March 2012 issue of Toronto Life, yet another writer, this time technology critic Jesse Brown, is once again proclaiming “death” (or a some version of demise) for the book industry claiming, “Books are good business for everyone but the book business,” as he wrote in “The Final Chapter,” his essay in the March 2012 edition of Toronto Life (I’d add the link to the essay but, alas, it’s not online, you have to buy the print edition, oh, the irony, right?).

Now, I’m going to say something radical. Please, go ahead and disagree with me — there may be issues with the book selling business: independents getting crushed by the chains; Amazon’s heavy-handed, well everything; Indigo’s move into whatever “lifestyle” means; and the fact that we are probably just publishing too many books — but none of that has to actually do with publishing. Publishers, sure, need to evolve as well, and I’ll be the first to lecture on new and improved business models to ensure our survival, but, and this is the important part, so please pay attention: Our margins might be small but our business is profitable. Continue reading “Publishing Talkback: TL’s The “Final” Chapter, Or, Shut Up Jesse Brown”

#19 – The Canterbury Trail by Angie Abdou

I follow @Angie_Abdou on Twitter, and she follows me. It’s a fun internet friendship. We have similar tastes in books and a penchant for crying at inopportune moments. And when I confessed that I have a strange obsession with climbing-related nonfiction, she asked if I’d enjoy climbing-related fiction and promptly mailed me a copy of her intense, addictive, and refreshing novel, The Canterbury Trail.

Of course, I’m going to digress — I lived in a town not unlike the fictional Coalton, BC. I fooled around with a boy or two insanely like F-Bomb, SOR and Loco, and while I never stayed in Banff long enough to get to ski season, I certainly did my share of dumb, dangerous things the two summers I spent there during university. And I got it. The reason why people live in places like Coalton. For me, and it’s not this way for everyone, it was one-part my youth and another part my need to run away, it wasn’t real life. I completely got Alison, the slightly-older journalist who decamped to the town and invited herself up the mountain with the boys just for the ride. When I lived in Banff, we had no television, no phone, no internet, no radio, no newspapers, nothing to tether us back down to society except beer, mountains, and elk. It was awesome. Continue reading “#19 – The Canterbury Trail by Angie Abdou”

Reading Update: Public Domain Bits & Pieces

So, let’s give up the ghost — I’m working on a massive public domain project at work, and it’s amazingly fun. We’re creating really beautiful ebooks from PD texts, and creating some fun content around events (like the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic) and it’s a really great list. It’s also a little like a cyclone — we whirl around and pile on more books into the never-ending spreadsheet and very rarely come out the other side as the wind whips us along.

As a result, I’ve been reading a whole pile of PD texts, from the utterly strange (John Jacob Astor’s A Journey In Other Worlds, #12), to the utterly brilliant (Hemingway’s The Old Man in the Sea), to lesser works by great writers (To Have and Have Not [an abysmally bad Hemingway novel, #13] and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe), to a whole host of nonfiction around the sinking of the Titanic (#s 14, 15, 16: The Loss of the S.S. Titanic, The Truth About the Titanic & The Wreck of the Titan), to some classic children’s literature that I had never actually read (The Secret Garden, #17), and the list goes on (well, to a reread of Tender is the Night (#18) even though I was sure I read it in university).

Anyway, by the time I’m finished reading through the books, checking the ePubs, getting frustrated with how Edgar Allan Poe uses so much flapjacking Greek, I don’t feel like blogging about the books at all. However, I am making great inroads in terms of my 1001 Books challenge, which is enough of a reason to continue with the public domain project in general…

PS – I forgot one yesterday, Gulliver’s Travels (#20), which I enjoyed immensely and had a great conversation with my RRHB about, he insists it’s the first of science fiction, I equate it to the rollicking adventure stories of the time, like Robinson Crusoe. I did admit that the end bored me a bit, and that I preferred the first three parts to the fourth, but, overall, it’s probably my favourite that I’ve read since embarking upon this project…

Busted on the Bloor Line: This Sounds Much Worse Than It Is

First, before I dive into the guts, and, well, grumpiness of where this post will necessarily go, I want to post this — a portrait of my son as if we were sending him off to The Wall with Jon Snow and the rest of the Night’s Watch. Can you tell we’re a little excited about the return of Game of Thrones?

Anyway, for members of my family who might read this, please don’t be alarmed, and don’t be upset, please feel free to not read this, it’s okay.

So, I saw the psychiatrist last week. I am freely going to admit that I’ve been in some form of therapy for well over a decade now. If only to cope with the disease, to right some difficult patterns in my head, and to be able to understand how my mind works just that little bit better. And when I was there, rambling as I do, I told her that I feel unhealthy in my body, unhealthy in mind, and unhealthy in my spirit — that not a single part of me feels like myself, and I don’t even know where to begin in terms of getting it back. Continue reading “Busted on the Bloor Line: This Sounds Much Worse Than It Is”

#12 – The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniuk

When I was a teenager, I visited Russia for a school trip. It was March break so it was cold, snowy, winter. We spent an afternoon in the Hermitage Museum, founded by Catherine the Great in 1764. It was magnificent. It fostered a love of art and museums in me that continues to this day. I don’t consider it travelling unless I’ve visited an artful place.

I have fond memories of Russia, and so I knew the setting alone would endear Eva Stachniuk’s novel to me, even before I started. Sometimes, a book is simply as good as its storytelling: frank, honest, compelling, and that’s exactly the case with The Winter Palace. The book opens with a confession, its narrator, Barbara (“Varvara”), is a “tongue,” a spy in the Russian court. First, she works for the Empress, Elizabeth, and then for the Grand Duchess of all the Russias, Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, who later becomes Catherine the Great. Continue reading “#12 – The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniuk”