Ragdoll Out

Well, I’ll be away for a week at a work conference starting (very early) tomorrow morning with very limited access to the internet. Bummer. Hopefully I’ll have finally finished Out of Africa by the time I get home. Maybe not.

In lieu of an actual post that has, well, meaning, here are some random thoughts:

1. I will watch any movie that Leonardo DiCaprio stars in. Case in point: we just finished up Blood Diamond. I’ve now seen The Departed three times. I could watch that movie every day and not get sick of it.

2. It’s next to impossible to pack for an in-between season trip that’s all about work. What do you wear? Office clothes? Fun clothes? A combination of both?

3. We did a really cool project at work. We completed a wiki for a book coming out next month called The Raw Shark Texts. Full TRH Books report tk. But check it out when you’re bored at work. It’s been years since I actually felt the thrill of building, the crisp agony of having too much to do and not enough time to do it in, and the heartbeat of your fingers as they type the url over and over and over and over and over again. I’m going to have to pace myself though because the last thing I need is the stress that goes along with a busy job overtaking my life, revving up my system and having the disease holler, “hey! I’m back!”

4. The tailbone? Still hurts.

5. In about three weeks, I’ll be a band widow. Anyone free for a movie? I promise I can go see ones that Leo’s not in…

6. A new column will go up on Experience Toronto while I’m gone. It’s about Toronto as a literary landscape. I think In the Skin of a Lion and Cat’s Eye are my two favourite books set in the city I call home.

7. Sarah Silverman show: brilliant or silly? A combination of both? If it were a fight to the death, I don’t think I could decide.

#21 – The Hopeless Romantics Handbook

Gemma Townley’s latest novel The Hopeless Romantic’s Handbook is finally out in stores. I read the book months ago when the galleys came in to work, took it home, and tossed it back in one night. Chicklit is so addictive! Anyway, the heroine of the novel finds a lovely old book entitled, you guessed it, The Hopeless Romantic’s Handbook. The unlucky in love Kate decides she’ll follow the steps and see what happens. And faster than you can snap your fingers Joe, a handsome American actor, shows up on the scene and she’s smitten.

Only the book gets a lot more complicated as Kate’s career (she’s a television decorator working on a fairly low-rated cable show) sort of careens off track. And, as is the law of chicklit, her love life follows suit. The more Kate listens to the book, the worse things get, and soon her two best pals, Sally and Tom (and especially Tom), are quite worried for her.

There’s a happy ending, of course. But Townley has such a knack for creating life-like characters within the fantasy setting the genre demands that you don’t mind that the plot might be a bit predictable. She always manages to add a little extra bit of inventiveness, a little something or other that pulls the books slightly off-centre of the stereotypes. Anyway, you all know how much I adore Gemma and her writing, so if you’re looking for a bit of mental escape this Easter long weekend, I do recommend picking her up.

Spring Cleaning

Every few months or so, my RRHB goes manic with the cleaning. Today, he decided, was closet cleaning day. That meant taking out every single box and item of, well, stuff, from the upstairs closet and going through it.

As a result, I purged books. Boxes and boxes of books. They were mainly leftovers from my university days, a lot of literary criticism, and piles of books I had never finished or would never read again. But every book that he brought out of a box and I looked at, had some sort of memory attached. Whether it was how awful my Victorian professors were in both under grad and graduate school, or how many copies of On the Road we own (count: 3) or the duplicates we discovered (3 different copies of Hey Nostradamus, all unread), and whole worlds of novels that every time one came out of the box I sort of welled up remembering why I loved it or what point of my life in which the book was read.

And now I feel a world better because books are not tumbling off the shelves, bell hooks can be rightfully passed on to the next righteous feminist coming into university, and I’ve got an entire shelf dedicated to the 1001 Books and to my own Around the World in 52 Books challenge. It’s funny how you can forget what you had for breakfast three weeks ago but you can remember exactly what it felt like the first time you read The Rainbow.

The funniest bit that came out of the afternoon was, no doubt, when I said, “Working in publishing is certainly going to be the death of me. I just can’t say no to any book.”

My RRHB returned, “You’re like an alcholic working in a bar honey.”

Indeed.

Shhhh

I am kind of excited because it looks like I’ll be writing another Classic Starts this year. After I’m finished, I’ll have written eight of the abridged classics for kids for Sterling. I’m not sure if they’ve been announced properly so I won’t mention the title, but suffice it to say, it should be a world easier than the last two I wrote.

The Shawl


So I haven’t been knitting a lot this week because of the whole tailbone thing (it hurts to sit up on a chair!) but I did manage to finished Project #2 – The Shawl. I had bought this yarn maybe two years ago at a craft show with Sam and never got the nerve to actually knit it up. Shockingly called “Thea’s Triangular Shawl,” it uses two skeins of PORTRAIT by Artful Yarns and giant needles (I used size 8 that I had at home). They say to switch to circular needles but I found the mohair so slippery that I stuck with straight ones for the duration of the project. And double props to my lovely RRHB who kindly modeled the shawl for me.

It’s not perfect but I think it’ll look nice with a jean jacket this fall. The hardest part was making so called ‘invisible’ additions in the middle, it always looks crooked. Oh well, at least I finished!

#20 – Platform

Wow. Is it hot in here or is it just me?

Ahem.

Don’t look now but I’m probably blushing bright red and feeling somewhat uncomfortable to be seen in public having just finished Michel Houellebecq’s Platform. It’s the French entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge (changed from Nemirovsky) and it’s also on the 1001 Books list, which is also why I made the swap, I don’t mind killing two lists with one title.

Platform is a spicy, sensual, almost-porn-like novel about, well, a man named Michel who finds himself completely cut off from life after his father’s death (he was murdered). Despite the fact that he has very little in the way of human contact, no friends, etc., he has a lot of very graphic sex between these covers. Just after his father’s murderer is caught, Michel leaves Paris and takes a trip to Thailand, where he sleeps with many nubile prostitutes and also meets Valerie, who will later become his lover, then the love of his life, and then a catalyst for the rest of the story.

It is through this relationship with Valerie, who works for the travel company arranging the tours, that Michel redeems himself. They are well suited: he loves getting pleasure; she loves giving it. Aw, a match made in heaven. Oh, and she’s into women, so my goodness, it’s one steam room fantasy away from Pay-Per-View. Yawn.

I know I’m being flippant, and even though Michel doesn’t necessarily use the word love, his feelings for Valerie result in his happiness and in his feeling a connection for a member of the opposite sex that he has never before felt in his life. As their relationship progresses, Valerie’s career takes off as she and her boss, Jean-Yves, move companies and launch a series of high profile resort holidays. While checking out one of the hotels in their roster, Michel has a brainwave to capitalize on the sex trade aspect of vacationing in places like Thailand, among other countries, including Cuba, and a new type of resort is born.

What keeps the novel from trailing off into Harlequin romance for men territory is Houellebecq’s razor sharp prose. One part life story, and two parts love story, Platform also deals with a number of political, racial and societal issues. And while the main character seems motivated by his sexual relationships, it seems he’s also wildly aware of the problems that this brings to the human psyche. It’s a strangely prophetic novel, especially as its central tragedy comes about as a result of religious terrorism.

Houellebecq’s not afraid of saying things that may not be politically correct; it seems, he just wants to point out the odd ironies that life seems to keep throwing in his direction. And yes, there’s the sex: it’s rampant, violent, open, honest, often and sometimes even strangely compelling. It becomes a crucial way for Michel to tell his story. But in a way it’s also kind of gratuitous, often over-exposed and a little over the top. Maybe that’s just my own Western prudishness coming out, but there’s a fine line between porn and art, and maybe I’m just not one to tell the difference?

One review I read over at the Guardian (which gives away the ending, shockingly, so don’t read if you don’t want it spoiled), insists that Houellebecq is writing back to L’Etranger, in a way bringing those kind of existential concerns into the modern century, when it’s not just the human condition, but the human condition in the world that seems to result in a crisis of consciousness.

And I kind of agree, there’s a depth to this novel; it’s bookish at the same time as it’s somewhat bent. I enjoyed Platform, but I most certainly wouldn’t be giving it to my grandmother for Christmas. Or to anyone else who might blush at the mere mention of the word sex in print (fingers pointed right at me).

Not having anything around to read is dangerous: you have to content yourself with life itself, and that can lead you to take risks.

TRH TV – The Black Donnellys

Like many Canadians, I sort of assumed that the TV show had something, if in name only, to do with the infamous Black Donnellys, especially with co-creator Paul Haggis being, well from London, Ontario and all. Alas, it’s not, other than the name and the whole criminal-thing, The Black Donnellys has nothing at all in common with that infamous family. Well, except that Haggis must have thought they had a pretty cool name and one of the boys even has a bum leg in Haggis’s world, just like “Clubfoot Will,” one of the original Donnelly sons.

Annnnywaaaay. I really wish that TWoP was recapping the show in all it’s cheese-eating glory. Because for some reason, despite the fact that it’s, well, awful, I can’t stop watching it. I’m even forcing my RRHB to watch it and saying totally banal things like: “See, see it’s getting better!”

It’s so cliched and heavy-handed, with the ridiculous “narrator” from some distant point in the future (seriously?) re-telling the backstory in such painful episodes that you want to reach into the television, grab him, and hand him over to Tony Soprano. Did I mention that he’s called “Joey Ice Cream”? Yeah, exactly. Every time he comes on screen I think, why do they need him, is the story not strong enough on its own. And has Paul Haggis ever heard of “show don’t tell”? Which is what every single writing teacher has told me my entire life?

The worst part is, with a little finesse, the show could actually be good. I like stories that take the main character, in this case, the eldest brother, Tommy, off the course of his life and into something totally unexpected. I’m even not minding the train wreck of the second-oldest (I think) brother, Jimmy, who is, predictably a heroin addict and a violent SOB who never truly, although we’re repeatedly told it’s coming, gets his comeuppance. I mean he’s such a used and abused character in pop culture: the ‘bad’ brother. But what’s worse is that the show keeps telling us he’ll get the other brothers into trouble and nothing ever seems to happen. Tommy makes sure he’s in jail to keep him safe, and then, next thing we know he’s out of jail and some pale flashback explains how that happened. He walks drunk and high into a wake (for the man that Tommy killed) and the narrator says, “this is going to be bad.” And again, NOTHING HAPPENS.

I’m guessing that if I’m just a little bit patient, the show might actually turn itself around, but for now, I’ve got really no idea why I’m still watching it. I suppose it comes down to the fact that I totally think Kirk Acevedo is, like, wickedly hot. But is that enough to keep the show in a permanent always-tape Faux-Vo status? Probably not.

For once I’d like someone to step in and pull Paul Haggis out of his desperate need to hack together elements of relationships (familial and otherwise) with giant baseball bat bashing on head-like “situations” (to totally mix my own metaphors) and to let the characters develop more like they do on cable, slowly and with larger purpose. But I guess in this day and age, where shows are supposed to last forever and deal with everything in every bloody episode (Grey’s Anatomy, I’m looking at you), subtlety is not necessarily top of mind.

Ouch

Things happen in threes. At least that’s what my life has taught me. And here goes the three things that happened in the last few days:

1. I dropped an envelope with $1000.00 in it on our garage floor. Not only was this renovating money to pay a contractor but it was was a THOUSAND dollars. A lot of money by anyone’s standards, I forgot the envelope was on my lap and totally blanked as I left the car last Thursday night after the RRHB and I went to see a performance of Susie Burpee’s The Spinster’s Almanac (which I enjoyed, but especially enjoyed because of Christine Fellows hauntingly beautiful and bird-centric music).

2. I fell down the stairs at work coming out of our building. Landed totally on my face. I fell so hard that a fellow who was trying nonchalantly to eat his street meat hot dog inside and away from the brewing storm, shouted, “Oh my god are you okay?”, promptly transferred said dog to the other hand, and tried to help me up. I couldn’t even look at him I was so embarrassed. If only my life was a chick lit book and I wasn’t already married…

3. On Saturday night, while out with said RRHB and some friends from high school, I fell off my chair. And now, my tailbone hurts so much that it’s actually causing me to feel nauseous. It hurt a bit yesterday but nothing like today when just sitting in my chair at work makes me want to pass out. Ouuuuchhhh.

Sigh.

The adventures of Ragdoll indeed.