New Year’s Revolutions Are Working

So in my attempt to not read celebrity gossip, I decided to use the internet for good and thought I’d check out The New Yorker‘s web site when I needed a mental break from work. Am I ever glad I did. Here’s Jhumpa Lahiri reading and discussing William Trevor’s story “A Day.”

Lahiri says she would be “lost” without having discovered William Trevor. Is there an author out there that you’d be lost without discovering? For me in my formative years it was always Kerouac and Henry Miller — not that I would ever write like either, but I obsessed over their absolute abandon of a ‘normal’ life for their art. And they wrote about places and people I was dying to see and meet. And now Paris and Big Sur, California are two of my favourite places that I’ve visited. Funny how those things work out, isn’t it?

In terms of writers, Roddy Doyle is on my life list of writers to look up to, also the Margaret Atwood that wrote Surfacing, which is my favourite of her novels, and these days I’m kind of obsessed with Tim Winton after reading Breath, which I think will be one of the best books I’ll have read this year…

New Year’s Revolutions 2008

So I had some good New Year’s Revolutions last year. And I think I managed success with a few of them, and so I’m integrating this year’s into my check up with Revolutions 2007:

1. I am two-thirds done a giant draft of the novel, and am quite further ahead then where I was last year. This Revolution will continue this year — I want to get one good, readable draft done of what I’m no longer calling “the long story” but actually owning up to the fact that I’m trying to write a novel.

2. The weight thing…I have since discovered that it’s probably the methotrexate that’s stopping me from losing weight. I biked, had a dance class, did pilates, yoga, walked, stopped driving everywhere, and even made a very conscious effort to eat right, and I lost a whopping six pounds in total. And then I tried to not eat very much at all, at least a third of what I was eating before, and managed another two pounds. Lastly, I had a long conversation with an old friend who is also taking the meds, and she noticed the same thing, dieting, exercising and still gaining weight, so that convinced me even more that it’s the drugs and not me. I am still going to try to be as healthy as possible this year but realize that there’s not a lot I can do while I’m in my 4th year of taking meds for the disease.

3. Up next is something of a personal nature. I am going to try and be less judgmental of people. It’s something I do all the time, make quick decisions about who and what people are before I really know them. We had a house guest for the past couple days and he said in passing, “You know, it’s truly hard not to judge people.” and I turned to him and said, “It’s actually an impossibility for me.” Maybe I’ll be able to do as well with that as I’ve done with complaining this past year. And I’m adding in the whole stopping celebrity gossip here too. Because it’s kind of the same thing — I’m being judgmental when soaring through intimate details of stranger’s lives.

4. I failed miserably at watching less television. But I did manage to read a heck of a lot more books this year, so I’m assuming that came from TV time. This year I’m going to keep up with my page a day challenges and keep reading. I’d like to get to 100 books this year. I made it to approximately 90 this year (including the Harlequins), which isn’t bad at all. It’s only 10 more.

5. Lastly, I’m going to keep better track of things, budget better, and not be so messy at home so that our weekly cleanups take hours more than necessarily because I pile all my clothes up when I get home from work. We’ll see how that one goes. I have a few very particular things I’m saving for, and I want to make sure I’m not being frivolous with money. That’s much easier said than done.

First Lines Meme

I am absolutely loving many things about my new computer, not the first of which is being able to blog while watching television. Lame, I know, but when you’ve got a cold and have Faux-voed old episodes of Alias to combat the writer’s strike, anything’s entertainment. So, I’ve been making the rounds of the many blogs I haven’t been able to keep up with over the last few weeks because things were so crazy between work and life. Quite a few of my blog friends have done the first lines meme, and so I thought, in the spirit of developing my own set of new year’s revolutions, it might be a good place to start.

January 2007: It’s oddly fitting that this book straddled by 2006-2007 reading; it’s possibly the best book I’ve read in ages. (About Kevin Patterson’s Consumption.)

February 2007: Last night, despite feeling desperately under the weather, I headed out in the cold to my first Sweater class at Knitomatic.

March 2007: 1. There is a lot of snow outside.

April 2007: I’m glad to be back from conference—it was a long week.

May 2007: There’s nothing like sunshine…and a royalty cheque to brighten up your day.

June 2007: Well, Michiko Kakutani apparently vehemently disliked On Chesil Beach, calling it “a smarmy portrait of two incomprehensible and unlikable people” (link via Baby Got Books).

July 2007: Massey Hall in Toronto was the last stop on Wilco’s Eastern Seaboard tour (dunno if that was the ‘name’ of the tour considering how totally un-rock sexy it is).

August 2007: I’ve been at a work conference since Sunday, and haven’t been home a single night this week to really blog, so here’s a quick catch-up…

September 2007: Just a quickie post to say that I am utterly engrossed by Mad Men.

October 2007: When I rode my bike into work this morning, still happy that even though it’s October, the weather doesn’t necessitate a heavy wool “biking” (translation old and crappy) sweater just yet, it was so foggy that it reminded me of Dublin.

November 2007: Before reading any further, let me remind everyone about Kate Sutherland’s marvelous All in Together Girls, it’s a book of literary, some linked, some not, short stories that mainly take place in Saskatchewan.

December 2007: I emerged from the boardroom momentarily to get a cup of tea yesterday.
We’ve been in sales conference since Sunday.

Oddly, three entries concern sales conference, which isn’t all that strange considering they’re always at the end of one month and bleed into the beginning of another. A few books, one knitting class, an obsession with Mad Men, some biking, and some complaining. Sure seems like my life.

Have Cold Will Photoblog Instead

The stupid cold hangs on for dear life, which makes me think that perhaps it’s not a passing fancy kind of illness, but something with legs, and I am not prepared for that in the least.

It was snowing the other day just the kind of flakes that I love: big, awkward, sticky, and melting before they even hit the ground.
I tried to take a picture but the camera doesn’t quite catch them in the right way. Regardless, they made me happy, in that way seeing snow from inside can make you happy, if only for a moment before you turn on the TV to realize the writers’ strike is still going strong and your Faux-Vo is almost empty and the only Ethan Hawke going is Snow Falling on Cedars.
Ah, the week Between Christmas and New Year continues.

Keep Feeling Procrastination

I’ve got a cold so my head is totally foggy. Even though I should be writing now, I’m trolling the internet and making myself kind of sick. I watched an awful video, and not even by accident, of poor Brad Pitt trying to go to McDonald’s with his kids. And as disgusted with the whole thing that I was (I could only watch about a minute), I kept thinking to myself, “but I’m still clicking on it…”

For the last few years I’ve flirted with giving up internet gossip and find myself, embarrassed and ashamed, typing in http://socialitelife.com at work in a spare moment or two between meetings just to give myself some sort of mental health holiday. Well, no more — I know it’s all holier than thou and kind of sanctimonious, but who really cares of Brad Pitt’s taking his kids to McDonald’s? Why does it deserve some sort of hallelujah chorus from all the kids around with their cell phones and snapping pictures — how would that be to live your life everyday, in your own home, ransacked by hungry vultures all vying to do you harm in a small way. And then I click on it and justify the whole existence of the awful market, by paying the advertisers and refusing to ignore the dirty business entirely.

So that’s my number one New Year’s Revolution: Stop reading celebrity gossip. I highly doubt I’ll be able to avoid it entirely, but maybe I can get back to the ragdoll of years passed, the one who would only use the web for good. Ha! Does she even exist anymore? Trails of her lost in cyberspace where she used to track down literary journals to send poetry and stories to, who wrote for great sites, and who wanted more than anything to write books of her own?

Let’s find that girl again this year, shall we?

And here’s what got me started on the whole Brad Pitt tangent anyway. An article I wrote for work about movie tie-ins is up on the homepage of MSN today. I read about 50 pages of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and even though I didn’t finish the book, I was enjoying it. I simply got swept away by something else.

#84 – The Frozen Thames

It’s a brave new world. I am sitting on my couch this morning with my brand new (gifted by my incredibly generous brother) MacBook in front of me typing this blog entry. After a false start, and a shady Future Shop clerk who sold him a used model that was actually missing important pieces (like the plug that goes from the power adaptor to the wall) and had a burned out hard drive, we’re back on track this morning with a beautiful new machine that hums and looks absolutely gorgeous.

Having not owned a Mac before, I’m stumbling around, but the more I get used to it, the more I like it, and not just because the commercials with Justin Long are just so cute. I’m excited to learn how to cut movies and all that fun stuff — but for now I’ll settle for figuring out how to get a photo into this post.
Okay, enough preamble.
Oh, wait, more preamble.
Today is my 2nd wedding anniversary and the anniversary of our 9th year living together. Congratulations to us!
Okay, now that’s enough preamble.
Helen Humphreys’s The Frozen Thames is an interesting novel. Written as 40 short vignettes describing each time the Thames has frozen over the last 1,000 or so years (the book starts with the 1142 freeze). Each story captures a moment in time around when the Thames froze from all different walks of life, publicans, noblemen, Kings, Queens, clergy — the characters are as different as the ice itself.
While some of the stories tend toward repetition (there are a lot of frozen birds and a lot of Frost Fairs), each one has intimate historical details that bring that particular year to life. Whether it’s Queen Matilda fighting off her cousin in the first tale, or the strange inscription the mason makes on the stone in another, it’s impossible not to be taken in by the stories and transported to a time when warmth was little but a figment of one’s imagination.
Of the stories, my favourites include the Postscript, 1709, 1716, 1565 and 1809. And I don’t want to give anything away really because it’s a sweet little book to read. In the Author’s Note, Humphreys explains that she wanted to write about ice at a time when our world might soon be without it entirely. To document the wonders of the cold so that there would be a record. A cool appreciation for a season so many of us simply try and avoid — by staying inside, by wrapping up in sleeping bag coats, by travelling down south — instead of maybe enjoying it a little, like so many of her characters who walk along the frozen banks wondering at the sounds, wandering over the makeshift tundras, and always realizing the inspiration within.
PHOTO IN CONTEXT: How I wouldn’t love to simply have taken the book outside, plopped it into the snowbank, and shot the picture, but that would ruin the package, and it’s a truly delightful looking book. Instead, it’s a fairly typical shot of the book on the chair in our TV room.

#83 – Triangle

Even without noticing it acutely, I’m probably reading a book a day, well at least over the last two anyway. This trend might need to continue as my body forces me to rest, having now come down with a rotten cold not even ten days after the plague, and not even a day after my RRHB himself survived the awful GI sickness. Isn’t that what holidays are for?

Annnywaaay. Today it’s Katharine Weber’s excellent Triangle: A Novel. Started last night after we watched Eastern Promises (well, the RRHB watched the film; I half puttered about because I’d already seen the film), I just finished it moments ago, cuddled up with a cup of cold tea on the chair with Walter at my feet.

It’s an interesting novel, both in the way Weber chooses to tell the story, swinging back and forth over Esther Gottesfeld’s tale of the day in which she survived the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911, and the modern day lives of Esther, her granddaughter Rebecca and her composer lover George. On the edge of death from the ripe old age of 106, Esther has kept a number of secrets about the fire for 90 years, details that an historian named Ruth Zion is desperate to pry out of her cold, dead hands. They are all fascinating characters all, but its truly Rebecca and George, whose final composition in the book finds its inspiration from those tragic events, who find their lives inexorably changed when Esther finally dies.

Told in various formats (court transcripts, newspaper articles, phone conversations), and commenting mercilessly on the nature of storytelling itself, the novel is rich in fascinating details, not only about the music George composes and its compellingly scientific beginnings, but also in the nature of Rebecca’s work as a geneticist, and how both of these things tie the couple together in ways that are not necessarily traditional, but certainly work to keep the two of them happy. It’s a beautiful book about the nature of family, the threads of tradition, and a tragedy that defined the history of New York at that particular time and place.

Inspiring, addictive, ridiculously smart and completely effective, Triangle: A Novel might just be the perfect book for a partially snowy grey day in Toronto; miles and years away from 1911 New York, and worlds away from composers, geneticists, and all kinds of other things I would have never known about had I not finished Weber’s work.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I love the detail on the cover where the word “Triangle” is stitched onto a shirt (maybe a shirtwaist?), and wanted to highlight it with my photograph of the book sitting on my desk surrounded by used Kleenex (gross), pens, a notepad, with Helen Humphrey’s The Frozen Thames underneath.

#82 – Away

With Christmas decidedly out of the way, and the two of us absolutely crashing last night while we watched (and I bawled, natch) one of the greatest of the great movies, The Shawshank Redemption, we now come upon one of my favourite weeks of the year: Between Christmas and New Year (BCANY).

Goodness, a whole lot of nothing happens BCANY, last year we recovered from Cuba, the year before that we recovered from getting married (and watched all of the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy, awesome), and the year before that…well, you get the picture. We do a whole lot of recovering in the week BCANY. What generally happens is that I read a crapload of books, psyche myself up for the upcoming year, and generally bemoan the fact that I’m still sick (as defined by having to take stupid-ass medication) and going on my fourth year of dealing with this round of the disease.

So, as my year-end reading comes to a manic close, there might be a flurry of posts about different books I’ve finished. The first of which, Amy Bloom’s Away, I have to say I enjoyed very much, and I hope that it starts a sort of trend. It’s the story of Lillian Leyb, whose tale begins when her entire family is murdered in their home in a Russian pogrom and ends in the frozen tundras of the north. It’s an epic book, one that takes Lillian, in her grief, to New York City, where she lives in the Lower East Side, and then, upon discovering that her daughter Sophie isn’t dead after all, but rescued and spirited away to Siberia, on a journey all the way north. Lillian travels by train (in the closet), by boat (driven by her own hands) and sometimes by foot (blistered and bleeding), to northernmost Alaska, where she hopes to sail a boat across to Siberia and Sophie.

Bloom writes beautifully. The novel’s research isn’t obtrusive, but fits in the novel like sheets on a bed, lining Lillian’s story with bits to keep her warm despite what she endures. The book isn’t simply epic in scope, but also in story, along the way Lillian meets a cast of characters, and one would think it would be hard to keep them all straight, but Bloom’s skill as a novelist never allows a single thread to drop untied. Instead, she’s got a gift for ensuring that the reader knows the end to each main character. Tangential slips take off bit by bit as Lillian exits someone’s life, and every question is answered — even if it takes just a few paragraphs, Bloom makes sure you know what happens to the people that have touched Lillian’s life.

All in all, it was a delightful book to read, and I loved the Canadian content, the Telegraph Trail, Dawson City’s depleted “Paris of the North” status by the early 20th century, the bugs, and the idea of walking to the sound of your own voice, as Lillian does to keep going, telling Sophie stories with each step she takes. I won’t ruin the ending, but I will say that I’d highly recommend this novel, regardless of the fact that my RRHB thinks the cover might just be the most hideous he’s ever seen. I kind of like it, but am willing to hear arguments from either side.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: Away standing up on my new bookshelves, already crammed with books, candles, sunglasses, ARCs, computer cords, pictures, receipts, CDRs, brochures and a whole host of other crap.

Spare Time

Yesterday I wrapped the last of the presents, cleaned the house and got in some groceries to tide us over for the next few crazy days. My RRHB has been out of the house for the last eight days working, and he would have been at the job again today if he hadn’t have woken up with the unbearable sickness that knocked me out ten days or so ago. Poor baby. Popsicles and rest for him.

I can honestly say that I’ve never been this organized before a holiday before. Usually we’re both so busy and so crammed full of to-do lists that we’re shopping right until the last moment and manically running around to get everything done. Not this year. We did the majority of the shopping three weeks ago and I finished everything off last week after work, and now with the wrapping done, I’m not quite sure what to do with myself.

A flurry of blog posts, catching up on my other blog reading, listening to truly glorious music on Studio Sparks and generally arranging my thoughts before heading out to my parents, sans the very ill RRHB, tonight. Spare time is truly a blessing.

Now if I could only open the file that shouts: “How about you work on your novel?”

Happy Christmas all!

TRH Movie – Sweeney Todd

We had a pass to go and see this last Wednesday, which meant a mad panic of finishing up the Christmas shopping (done!) and racing around to actually get to the screening on time, which we did, yay!

I’m not going to say too much beyond the fact that it was one of the most enjoyable films I’ve seen all year long. Yes, I realize it’s a musical about a demon barber, and goodness is it gory, bloody and gruesome, but it’s also whimsical, beautiful and supremely acted. But what I liked the most, apart from the utterly delicious art direction, was all the singing, from start to finish, just like a stage musical.

So, if you’re out and about on Boxing Day and are in the mood for something that’ll keep your toes tapping and force you to cover your eyes at the same time, this is the film for you. As my RRHB said as we exited the theatre: “It’s got to be Tim Burton’s best.”