Deliverance & The Graduate

My Zip.ca membership has been working overtime these past few weeks. I ordered a bunch of older movies, ones that I’d never seen, but read a fair amount about, including The Graduate and Deliverance.

My favourite lines from each:

“Mrs. Robinson – you are trying to seduce me.”

(See organic, organic I say!)

“You push a little more power into Atlanta…a little more air conditioners for your smug little suburb…and you know what’s gonna happen? They’re gonna rape this whole landscape.”

You said it Burt and ain’t it still the truth.

#63 – Tipping the Velvet

Let me get something straight, I have nothing against velvet, nor do I fear any tipping of it, but lord, this is the first book in a long, long time I really didn’t like. The story felt so contrived and soap-opera-inspired that I was bored mid-way through. And considering Sarah Waters’s epic is over 400 pages, that’s a lot of trudging to get to the end.

Generally, I love a good Victorian thriller, but this is neither thrilling nor purely Victorian. Oh, it’s chalk full of great historical tidbits—if I truly wanted to know that dildos existed in 1985, which I really didn’t need to know. And if tons of hideously cliched sex scenes get you off, well Tipping the Velvet is the book for you. Because it certainly wasn’t for me.

I don’t like it when books feel contrived. When they set out to prove a point more than tell a story. The story itself was a good one, a young girl in Victorian England leaves home when she falls in love with a music hall singer named Kitty Butler. When Kitty can’t face what life would be like coming out in that century, she betrays Nan, the protagonist, who then runs away.

A lot of other things happen to Nan before the story comes full circle toward the end as Nan joins a burgeoning socialist movement at the behest of her ‘sweetheart,’ a very noble and dedicated woman named Florence. But in the end, it felt too much like the author’s voice was interfering with Nan’s story. That characters were simply devices for her to explore the lesbian community in the 1890s, which I think is a fabulous goal, and if it felt organic, I’d be the first one to cheer from the rafters.

All in all I finished the book because it was a book club choice and I’m looking forward to debating why I hated it so much at our next meeting! After loving Fingersmith so much I was convinced I couldn’t go wrong suggesting the book, whew, how wrong was I.

Edited to add: Is a sex scene any less contrived because it takes place between women? Just because the sex in the novel is lesbian sex should I hold it to different literary standards? I don’t think I should, but this book, if you look at it in terms of shows like Queer as Folk where the point of the matter was to bash the viewer over the head with the idea of gay sex until they came to accept it, maybe I should be more sympathetic to the book. But if it’s badly written with ‘torn bodices’ and ‘panting’, it’s bad writing, regardless of its subject matter. However, the fact that it was her first novel might be worth mentioning. And Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith is truly excellent; there’s not a cliche in sight.

My Name Is Earldyne

So, here’s what karma does to you: if you complain wholeheartedly about not wanting to eat what you’ve brought for lunch, said lunch will end up on the floor, totally ruining any chance of eating it in the first place.

Oh, and then add insult to injury — you will have no money to buy a new lunch and because your job is stuck in the middle of suburbia with no close bank machines to remedy the situation — you have nothing else to eat.

Damn karma.

Holiday Shopping – Celebrity Style

Awesome celebrity sightings yesterday while Christmas shopping. We saw Christopher Walken wearing plastic leisure pants and a down jacket in Yorkville, not once, but twice. The second time it looked like he was with Art Bergman, but there could be more than one craggy looking aging rock stars in Toronto with small dogs—you never know. The RRBF half-considered saying something to him but didn’t. I wondered if he’d mind if I asked him to dance with me right there on Bloor Street.

Then we saw Bruce Greenwood as we were driving out of Yorkville. He was standing on the street looking like he wanted to cross, but when we stopped to let him, he waved us off. He looked kind of pissed off too, and he was wearing this awful sweater; it was white with blue dogs. Dude!

And we saw Christie Blatchford too. She was in Aveda on Bloor Street. I didn’t have the courage to tell her she writes some of the worst run on sentences in the history of Canadian media. But I thought it. Does that count?

Mock-lorette Party Extravaganza

I am hungover. First off, I’m not even supposed to be drinking with the meds, but last night I made an exception. Next, I’m not really in any shape to be out all hours of the night, but again I made an exception. My lovely friends were kind enough to take me out last night to celebrate the impending non-wedding. I had such a good time I can’t thank them enough.

We ate a fab meal at Kalendar, then went to the Supermarket, which for Kensington is way, way too hip. It kind of scared me actually. Then we went to see the drag show at El Convento Rico, yay dancing! Yay cool looking drag queens I couldn’t see. Boo slimy fellows trying to dance with you. Boo spinny room because you’ve had too much beer.

Then, we topped off the evening with a College Street staple: nachos at Sneaky Dee’s.

It’s hard to sum up the evening in one or two funny, witty comments, but in the end I felt very special, which is a nice feeling. Although I’m damn glad Scarbie didn’t dare bring the veil she threatened me with. Also, it was nice to be out in the world after spending so much time at home by myself, I had almost forgotten how nice it is just to be a girl and hang out with your friends.

And it’s pretty damn fun to shake your ass too.

Podcast = Word of the Year

The OED has picked “podcast” as it’s word of the year according to The Book Standard, which is kind of cool. It’s wonderful how technology has infiltrated everyday life and how everyone now is either blogging, listening to podcasts or downloading some hot tune from iTunes.

I think the best present anyone could get me is the Oxford English Dictionary. My daily email from them sort of pales in comparison to what it might be like to own the entire glorious set of bajillion volumes. Oh, the things I would learn.

Like today for example, the Word of the Day was “girl power,” and are you as shocked as I was to learn that it was not, in fact, a product of the Spice Girls marketing team, but the Catholic church who coined it, well the church according to a British writer anyway. In 1952, Malcolm Lowry’s book Let contained this sentence: “Nearby is a Catholic church within which it says: ‘We want girl-power for our convent’.”

Words are awesome.

Holiday Shopping

Where to begin? I’m a cold-hearted scrooge this year with the whole wonder and magic of Christmas lost years ago to season after season of disappointments. Oh. So. Cheerful.

But there’s one thing I do love, and that’s shopping for presents. But because I’ve been so under the weather lately, I haven’t even really started my holiday shopping and am at a loss as to whether or not I’ll get finished by, ahem, the 25th. See, the main problem is that I generally buy people books, but now that I work for a publisher, I can’t really do that anymore. Or at least can’t give people books without them knowing where they came from — the cat’s kind of out of the bag on that one.

What does a girl who only ever buys books as presents do when that option is no longer available to her?

I’ll be sitting in the corner sucking on my candy cane trying to figure it out.

Let’s Get Political

Although I’m not usually outwardly political in this space, an article in today’s Globe made me furious. So the US Ambassador is ‘upset’ with the current non-government because, and I quote,

“[The US Ambassador] said Canada shows little respect for U.S. concerns. He acknowledged irritants such as the softwood lumber dispute and the war in Iraq, but called on Canada to accentuate the positive.”

Why should we accentuate the positive? Should we be jumping for joy at the fact that Bush is destroying the environment without a concern for future generations? We should celebrate the fact that neo-conservatives are reversing 40 years of hard earned rights for women? There might be a lot of things wrong with the Liberal Party, but everything seems fodder for “election”, which I honestly believe is a complete waste of our time. Harper didn’t need to take down the government; Layton didn’t need to side with him, the whole thing smacks of playground antics.

Men grabbing at power because someone else is perceived as weak to pursue their own ends. Oh, I’ll be voting on the 23rd, but it might not be for the party that I’ve voted for in every single local, provincial and federal election since I was 18, and that’s saying a lot to get someone like me to change her mind.

Now, has anyone read eOnline lately—what’s happening in the real world?

Edited later to add: Oh, and are we supposed to take it at face value that this “criticism” of the Liberals is coming at a time where the neo-Conseratives, the party most likely to let Bush sweep in and use up all of our natural resources like we’re another state, are poised to take power and turn North America into one big blue-loving map? Pul-lease.

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2005 and the 100 Notable Books of the Year articles are up. For the most part, I based the majority of my reading in the past on these lists. Now I use a combination of these lists, the Globe’s list, Chicklit recommendations and book club, Canadian prizes and word of mouth suggestions from friends. It’s a constant challenge to find the next thing to read. Oh, and I’m trying to throw in some classics, although that usually only lasts for about a week. It honestly took me ten, no almost fifteen, years to read Crime and Punishment.

Lord knows I love a good list. And I’m happy to report that I’ve already read four of the books on the Top 10 list: Saturday, Prep, The Lost Painting and The Year of Magical Thinking. Not bad for a year in which I’ve been sick, moved house, lost a job, found a job, written 4 abridgments, taken 2 classes, planned one non-wedding and went to Europe for 3 weeks.

Alas, I have read but one book on New York magazine’s list. Is it okay that Didion keeps popping up and I keep counting her? I think so, it’ll be the book found on most lists this year, I’m guessing.