Hallelujah! I’m safe for another five months, and can start reducing my medication, slightly, which is all so very exciting. On all accounts, I’ve got my “mild” Wegener’s under control (his words). We’ll see for sure what he says when all the bloodwork comes back in the next week or so. But by all accounts, I’m chuffed—it’s been a long, long three years.
#44 – Lord Loss
Sometimes, I don’t know whether or not to count YA and/or kids books in the final reading tally. They’re definitely quick reads, and sort of inflate the numbers, but sometimes I actually enjoy reading the books so much that I want to talk about them, and not just in passing.
Anyway, last week I read Darren Shan’s Lord Loss for our What Would Harry Read blog. Man, it’s one terrifying book. Normally, I don’t go for the really scary stuff, and goodness knows it takes a lot for the RRHB to get me to watch a horror film (after he dragged me to see The Exorcist, I’ve never forgiven him). But the book is so addictive that I found myself enjoying it as much for the style it’s written in, really slick and cool stream of consciousness, as for the main character himself, a tenacious young fellow with the unfortunate name of Grubbs Grady.
Grubbs battles with a hell of a demon, pun intended, called Lord Loss after he discovers his family is kind of cursed. I don’t want to give too much away because there are a lot of really good twists and turns that Shan takes throughout the narrative and it’s actually better not to know they’re coming. I wasn’t prepared for the horror-style violence in the book, but it didn’t dissuade me from reading the book in one quick sitting, late at night, in bed.
No photo in context, but I am going to post the truly terrifying cover, because, well, it’s kind of cool in that old-school horror way.
You’re Welcome
I’ve been noticing for a long while now that people have stopped saying, “You’re welcome.” For the most part it’s become “no problem,” the California-surfer-dude’s reply meant, I would imagine, to reassure the person thanking you that it really was easy to do whatever was just asked or accomplished. But to me, it seems a hollow, unmannerly action to say, “no problem,” when someone takes the time to thank you. It sort of renders the thank you even more obsolete if it truly took no effort on the part of the replier. What’s even the point of thanking a person if all they’re going to respond with is a curt, cheery “no problemo” in reply?
We were at a dinner party the other Friday night when I was mentioning that this been been bothering me for a while. I make every effort to say, “you’re welcome,” and have to catch myself mid-“no probl–” more often than not. Once I brought it up, Jill, our delightful hostess, said that she had read an article in the NY Times Magazine about the slow disappearance of “you’re welcome.” While William Safire’s commentary is mainly about “pleasure” and the glaring appropriation of the word by US politicians, he does note that in the States, “thank you” is now the most common phrase to use once someone offers their own thanks: “no thank you… noooo, thank you…no, please, thank you.”
It could go on like this forever in a meaningless Saturday Night Live sketch kind of way. Safire suggests we should make every effort to say, “my pleasure,” when someone thanks us, which I’ll try to do as well. But in my own mannerly way, that lovely phrase will never be quite right either. I was brought up on “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome,” and maybe for the first time in my life, my language is truly starting to show my age.
Wilco
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). And it’s been so long since I’d been to any kind of ticketed rock show (Prince, I think, was the last stadium show that I’d seen), that you kind of forget the whole experience. How far you are away from the band: I always prefer to be right up front so I can see what’s going on. How big the show seems: lots of flashing lights and the smoke machine. How everyone sings along to the big songs and whoops when they hear the first chords of the ones they really like.
It was a great show, and I knew a lot of the songs just by osmosis because the records are in constant rotation around our house, but I was super-pleased when they played “A Shot in the Arm,” and the lovely “Via Chicago” from Summerteeth, which is the one I listen to most of the time. And I liked how funny Jeff Tweedy was—when the audience started clapping spontaneously, he said, “You’re in the wrong tempo!” And he encouraged the audience to clap during the second encore, when they were playing “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” from A Ghost is Born, while the band stayed silent, he said, “Keep it together Toronto!” (or something of the like). Because many of the audiences all sped up. Funny those things that musicians notice; things that my RRHB notices, that I would have no idea whether or not we were faster or slower than the beat. “Did we speed up?” I asked my RRHB afterwards, “a little,” he said.
Funny, though, too, because I did a lot of thinking yesterday about the greatest rock shows I’ve ever seen, and most have them have been in small clubs: Tricky Woo at the El Mocambo, The Cons and Weakerthans from backstage at Lee’s, the Hip from backstage at Copp’s. Shows like that where I’ve been spoiled by a small crowd or by the RRW status, so it was a real treat to see a band from way up high, sort of observing the show as much as taking part in it. It’s different, for sure, to feel so unconnected to what’s going on well beneath you, but still hearing and seeing it all from a distance. But it was so much fun and the band was so good: big and intimate, cavalier and intense, brilliant and subdued, tight and fluid, all kinds of adjectives that prove I have no talent for writing about rock and roll.
I’d see them again in a heartbeat.
NOTE: the rest of the ‘during the show’ cell phones pictures are still on the RRHB’s phone to be edited in later when he gets back from the cottage.
Thought Process
Catch a glimpse of Faith Hill and Tim McGraw on the cover of a Toronto newspaper this morning on my way in to work.
Think, “Wow, what a cheesy photo.”
And then, “Wow, they’ve been married a long time.”
Remember the freak out Faith Hill had a the Grammy’s last year that was splattered all over the inter web.
Get “Jesus Take The Wheel” stuck in my head for the entire ride in.
Sigh.
Mercury In Retrograde
After having a sh*t day that involved getting raked over the coals in the bank this afternoon trying to find some funding for our home renovations, a lovely lady in my office said: “Don’t do anything with money this week—mercury is in retrograde.”
Good advice.
But does it fark with all other elements in the universe too? Because this weekend, the RRHB and I went out on Saturday to Canadian Tire to supe up my bike with some fancy, but inexpensive gadgets. I got a lovely gel pad for my seat and a new rack for the back that holds some new pannier bags. All good.
So I take my pimped up bike to work this morning and lock it up outside where I normally do, by the reference library, which is far enough away from Yonge and Bloor to ensure that it should be safe from harm. Or so you would think.
Because when I went outside after work today, after my crap-ass day, I discovered someone had stolen my seat.
So I cried.
And then rode, seatless, which I’m saying is not easy, to the nearest bike store on Harbord only to be treated like I’m less than human for inquiring about seats, and then promptly leaving to ride further, again, with nothing to rest my ample ass on, until I came to The Bike Joint.
Ah, what saviours.
Not only did they fix my seat but they also replaced the ‘quick release’ (which I didn’t even know I had) with a bolt. Now it’s not as easy to steal the seat in the first place. But what’s even better, was that when I discovered they didn’t take my credit card, I paid half the bill with what money I had and will deliver the rest to him on my way home tomorrow.
And he even said, “I would have trusted you for the whole amount.”
I cried first out of frustration for my bad day, and then when I discovered that some jackass needed my new gel cap so much that they stole the ENTIRE seat, but when I finally landed in tears on the concrete steps of The Bike Joint and discovered plain, old kindness, I dried my eyes and carried on my merry little way to come home and complain about it all over again on the inter web.
So why punish the bikers? Seriously, I would have given the person who stole my seat, happily, the $20.00-odd dollars it was worth, if only they had left my bike in tact.
Jackasses.
Author Vids In The House
Two very bright artists talk about their work in these videos: Steven Hall and Barbara Gowdy. Thought I’d share here too.
Facelift
So yesterday I decided to pick a new template for the blog as I got kind of sick of the plain Jane one I originally launched with all those many, many months ago. But I’m still not 100% convinced I like this one either. And I noticed that I picked the same one as Kate’s Book Blog, which was unintentional, of course, but I’m giving her props anyway for working the template to the best of its ability over there. Gosh, I love her blog.
Annnywaaay. I’ve been toying with the idea of late of migrating everything over to Typepad and paying for the blog just to be able to use a slightly better behind the scenes system. Who knows. The summer’s so busy so far that by the time I actually get around to customizing a look and feel, the internet might have blown up.
#43 – A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini’s new novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, takes its name from a poem by a 17th century Persian poet Saeb-e-Tabrizi, and focuses on the life stories of two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila. The lives of both women, despite their very different beginnings, are fraught with tragedy, oppression, dignity and finally redemption throughout the almost 400 pages of this book.
Mariam, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man from Herat, lives in a poor kolba, a roughshod mud hut outside of town with her mother. The product of an affair between her mother, a housekeeper, and her father, who comes to visit once a week, Mariam grows up with the stigma of being a harami. Her father is ashamed of her and her mother, to an extent, resents her presence, despite the keening kind of love she feel for her daughter. After the death of her mother, Mariam is sent by her father’s many wives to Kabul, where she’s forced to marry the brutish, and much older, Rasheed. Their union is not a happy one. For one thing, Mariam is a teenager, and her new ‘husband’ is not only much older, but much more strict. He expects Mariam to be a proper wife, wear a birka, and be obedient.
Years pass, and the marriage between Rasheed and Mariam deteriorates, but by this time, Hosseini has introduced the novel’s other main character: Laila. A beautiful, blonde-haired, light-eyed girl, Laila’s family dotes on her, and she’s raised by a dutiful father who feels that everything in life stems from having an education. Laila, of course, excels at the top of her class. And then, as the Soviet regime ends, and the country collapses once again, bombs fall around Laila’s life, pulling away her dearest friend Tariq, and destroying as much of her world as she could touch by spreading her arms out beside her.
The lives of these two women, who live as neighbours in Kabul, are set against these types of incidents, as the war-torn history of Afghanistan plays out in an extremely personal way. Rasheed takes centre-stage again, now husband to Mariam and Laila, and the two women slowly learn to navigate their lives around his brutish, slavenly behaviour.
A Thousand Splendid Suns isn’t as strong a novel as The Kite Runner and a number of parts feel forced. But like in The Kite Runner, there are serious elements in this book that build nicely from beginning to end. As the Afghanistan stop in my Around the World in 52 Countries, it’s a worthy novel just for giving me an inside look at life in a war-torn country. But without the central essence say found in the main characters of a book like Camilla Gibb’s exquisite Sweetness in the Belly, the first two-thirds of A Thousand Splendid Suns lacks in emotional depth or understanding, especially in the context of the women’s lives.
In a sense, to sweep the broad swath of history from 1964 until the years just after 9/11, Hosseini gives up some of Laila and Mariam’s own stories, and fits them into the major events that changed the country’s landscape. I’m not suggesting that’s a bad thing nor is this a bad book, not by any means, and the ending is particularly wonderful and has magical, even redemptive qualities, but it all feels kind of Hollywood. It feels like the book set out to prove to the rest of the world how awful life was for those women, and while it achieves that goal, I think it would have been even more effective had it not lacked a certain something when it came to their characterization. To an extent, I feel like Hosseini himself sacrificed these women in order to get his own point across, despite his obvious respect and admiration for both Mariam and Laila. But even despite my criticism, I really did enjoy reading this novel. And boy am I happy to at least be able to cross off one more country; it’s a just such a treat to keep my challenge alive.
PHOTO IN CONTEXT: I read the last 100 or so pages of the book this morning in bed while my RRHB slept after his show in Brantford last night. You can see the tail of the cat who kindly took up my position after I left. He’s keeping the home fires burning. And he’s a good excuse not to make the bed, just yet.
