book-keeping

Just a couple quick notes:

• For book-clubbers, I haven't forgotten to send out an e-mail about our date to discuss Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus! Will update y'all this week.
• I've taken a wee break from the Important Male Authors push. Put it to holidaying, put it to my love of Elizabeth Hay. (I love Elizabeth Hay, and despite my possessions purge, I bought another book of hers this weekend. But at the Wee Book Inn, so it was more like I was doing research on how to sell books. Maybe? I also bought Northanger Abbey.) Currently I am reading a book written by a friend, but soon I will get back to men. I'm thinking Atonement....
• I gave away my copy of Anna Karenina. Sorry, friends. But my brother wanted to take a spin at Tolstoy.... And maybe I was never going to finish it. We'll never really know.
• Emily Giffin has a new book on store shelves! I know that liking Emily Giffin is barely half a step up from liking Sophie Kinsella. I accept this about myself.
• I bought Certain Girls while in London. Haven't had a chance to read it yet, but was thrilled to have the UK version, which is in paperback already and surprisingly cheaper than the North American hardcover even after doing the math of converting pounds to dollars.
• Have I already mentioned how much I love how Brits love books? I know that's a weird thing to say, but they have book ads everywhere, on billboards and along Tube station walls. Last month, the big push was on to sell Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. It's so weird to be somewhere other than Canada and see Naomi Klein looking so seriously at you, perhaps judging you for caring so much about whether your jeans are stylish or if you have the right shoes....

gone Hollywood

Here’s my own personal Catch-22 -- I spend concentrated time trying to find book covers that in no way feature pictures of, say, Scarlett Johansson.

If a movie is based on a book, I want to find the book that still has its original art on the cover. I guess it’s sort of like how I want the book that doesn’t have Oprah’s stamp on it. (I’ve probably mentioned this before, but my copy of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina actually had an additional Oprah sleeve wrapped around it when I purchased it. It made me sad a modern day talk show host could somehow claim even a small part of a book that outdates her by a couple centuries.)

At the same time, I’m fairly open to suggestion. And so last night, when I went to Elizabeth: The Golden Age (not good, if you’re wondering, but not exactly bad, either -- if you really want to see this movie, wait for it to come to DVD and in the meantime watch its far better prequel), I was struck by the premise of P.S. I Love You.

The movie, starring Oscar so-and-so’s, is scheduled to come out later this year, I guess. It’s based on a book by Cecelia Ahern, which I bought today in giddy expectation of a love story I will enjoy.

My giddiness is getting out of hand, lately.

While in Ottawa, I went to the movie version of The Jane Austen Book Club.

For the record, I didn’t actually expect to enjoy this movie much. For once, I was bothered, right off the bat, by how young everyone cast is. Because in Karen Joy Fowler’s book, there’s such an emphasis on middle age. I felt like going with Maria Bello and Amy Brenneman (who, by the way, does not look old enough to have a daughter in her 20s) was sort of pandering to our society’s misplaced ideals of beauty, which are linked to youth.

I still think whoever cast the film should have tried a little harder to find older women to play the main characters.

But I sort of easily put my concerns aside during the film’s opening credits. Everyone’s rushing around in today’s LA, no time to think, no time for pleasantries -- and yes, I know many another movie critic before me has discussed these opening scenes. Then, as the movie opens, it really does stay true to Fowler’s excellent book. There’s just enough Austen trivia for those who love the books, but not too much for those who’ve never read them. The story doesn’t rely too fully on the six novels, but you can easily recognize how Bello’s Jocelyn is Emma, etc.

I love, love, loved it. Cross your fingers for future adapted screenplays.

feelin' hot hot hot

Mm. Glad to get that song stuck in your head, dear reader (Mom, Dad, Granny).

It's been deliciously hot in Edmonton the last couple days. The kind of hot that makes you want to have picnics on the legislature grounds, or really just sit in your air-conditioned apartment sucking on a popsicle and trying to write fiction.

I blame my sudden need to write really bad fiction on Jennifer Crusie, whose light touch makes you want to write stories of your own. Reading a book of hers is kind of like eating a cherry popsicle on a sunny day. Okay, maybe one of those blue, white and red popsicles.

I continue to take a break from Anna Karenina (perhaps until the fall, when it will be cold again and I won't want to leave my apartment and so I'll be stuck with Tolstoy's prose) and even from 28 (a gorgeous book that breaks your heart on every page -- it's actually been a rather rough week, so I needed a breather). And so I am reading a frothy,* fun Crusie novel, Don't Look Down, co-authored by Bob Mayer.

I've never read Mayer before, however I assume he is to blame for the testosterone-charged graphs about military weaponry that I've been skipping. Crusie, of course, is responsible for the witty dialogue and a female heroine who isn't a size six with perfect hair and a penchant for listening to Bruce Springsteen. (Seriously, why must all romance heroines listen to Springsteen? Does anyone in real life listen to Springsteen anymore?)

I'm sure I had a point in this blog entry that had nothing to do with making my family sing the "Hot, hot, hot" song to themselves for the rest of the day.... But it's summertime and I can't focus. So, a few sidenotes:

• HURRAH! How many summer nights did I spend while in university drinking strawberry daqs and watching Sex and the City? Too many to count, really. Perfect summer news.


• Thanks to a friend, I have a new book to add to my Must Read list.... unfortunately, I can't find the relevant CP article online anywhere, and I don't want to pilfer it. So please, dear reader (Granny, Mom, Dad), bear with this article from salon.com
  

*Have you ever noticed "frothy" is a term almost wholly reserved for the work of female writers, most often chick-lit authors? Erm, when not speaking of coffee of course. No matter how ludicrously commercial the work of King or Grisham, one rarely calls it "frothy." Hmph.

blame it on Tolstoy.... okay, blame it on Facebook

I've shelved Anna Karenina for the moment.

That's right. Shelved it. Not sold it. Not buried it. Not thrown it into a campfire. Tolstoy and I need a break. He was keeping me from blogging about books, as I read such lovely, descriptive paragraphs as this:

This Mlle Varenka was not really past her first youth, but was, as it were, a being without youth: she might have been nineteen, she might have been thirty.... She was like a beautiful flower which, while still full of petals, is scentless and no longer blooming. Besides that, she also could not be attractive to men because she lacked what Kitty had in over-abundance -- the restrained fire of life and an awareness of her attractiveness. (p. 215)

I mean, really, what can I say about this? This is a 19th century man's description of a sickly woman. He is using the sickly woman to describe the young, bright woman. She really is just another ultimately meaningless character introduced to shed more light on the six million other characters already introduced.

Not that I'm frustrated.

I will return to Anna Karenina. However, I am starting to think summer is not the time to be exploring Tolstoy. I might have to copy my friend who reads Russian classics each winter (intelligent, not pretentious).

So I am reading a light-hearted book that tastes like summer. It tastes like strawberry rhubarb pie, really.

Alice Hoffman lives near Boston, and all her books exude New English attitude, taking the reader to little towns where the doors are surely painted bright colours and one can smell the sea in the air. In Hoffman's books, witches are real. So is fate and destiny. Romance and hot hot heat. These are not romantic novels -- although I imagine they are not widely read by men -- but rather cautionary tales.

I'm currently reading Practical Magic, a book completely unlike the movie it inspired. For one, all the characters are adults or on the cusp of adulthood. Second, it lacks the bright Disney-ish touch seen in the movie. (On the negative side, it also lacks a character anything like Stockard Channing's. And I just love Stockard Channing.)

Frankly, Hoffman's clear prose -- poetic in its omniscience but really very straightforward -- is a welcome break. And yes, it's easy stuff, very much bask-in-the-sunshine-with-a-glass-of-sangria-while-wearing-your-sunglasses stuff. There are really four main characters, two sets of sisters, and it is their relationships with each other that form the backbone of the story. A nice change of pace from having to remember the surname, pet name and royal name of at least 20 different people, not to mention their extra-marital and pre-marital entanglements....

Not to complain about a classic or anything.

cringe, cringe, cringe

So, I was thinking about starting off this blog post with an entry from one of my old diaries.

But then I skimmed through one, from my first year of university, and a teeny bit of bile rose in my throat. My stomach folded in on itself, I was cringing so hard. I literally could not find a single entry I would not be embarrassed to have read by strangers, let alone my parents.

It is so embarrassing to realize that for an entire year, when I was supposed to be thinking about learning and big ideas and all that stuff, I was thinking pretty much non-stop about boys. Sigh. So glad I owe so much money in student loans.

See, I'm back from Europe, which accounts for my hiatus. Plus, I've been reading a book I can barely stand, so I've not really been moved to post anything at all....

But then, I saw this article in Saturday's edition of the Edmonton Journal -- specifically, in the youth-geared ed section.

The year was 1987, the boy's name was Rob, and 13-year-old Ingrid Wiese had some pressing concerns.

"He kisses weird," she wrote in her diary. "I just hope it doesn't stick and I don't end up kissing like that forever."

Twenty years later, Wiese hauled the diary out of storage and read it to a bar full of strangers just for laughs.

"Cringe readings," these exercises are called, and they are growing in popularity....

(Samantha Gross, The Associated Press)

Always eager to share my embarrassing stories -- the guy at a high school dance who mysteriously blew in my ear, the university fellow I kissed after he showed me he could drink from two bottles of beer at once, my former roommate's ex-boyfriend who used to sneak around our apartment, peeking around corners instead of entering rooms -- you'd think this sort of a reading would be my thing.

And absolutely, if one's happening in Edmonton, I'll be there.

But I'm not setting foot on that stage. It's too much. Sure, funny for others. However, I still feel those waves of insecurity that could sweep through my life at 16 and hold me hostage. Everyone does. The difference is you learn to handle it.... but I'm not sure I'm ready for others to laugh at it yet. Mostly I really do want to reach back and hug the girl I was, and the girls she hung out with -- a sentiment echoed, in Gross's article, by Wiese.

Oy.

By the way, the book I'm trying to get through?

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

In the edition I'm reading, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, it took 61 pages to meet Anna Karenina. Who, apparently, can extinguish her eyes.

I find the prose painful at times, and I can't decide if that's because I'm not reading it in Russian. And, of course, the book is just very long. I can't seem to care about any of the characters, especially Anna and Vronsky, the (I assume) ill-fated illicit lovers. They're both so bloody self-centred, completely uncaring of anyone around them.

One of my best friends, who just finished reading the classic this spring, promises this:

I found that Anna herself was one of the least developed characters in the book, and so really the best part is Levin. The title is misleading, because he's the real hero of the book. Trust me, it gets good. Also, because it's so long, by the time it finishes you don't really want it to end, like a TV series or something (although you do because you want to get back to real life).

Hmph. He's probably right. Must finish the book.

Besides, is there any better post-coitus description than this?

That which for almost a year had constituted the one exclusive desire of Vronsky's life, replacing all former desires; that which for Anna had been an impossible, horrible, but all the more enchanting dream of happiness -- this desire had been satisfied. Pale, his lower jaw trembling, he stood over her and pleaded with her to be calm, himself not knowing why or how.

"Anna! Anna!" he kept saying in a trembling voice. "Anna, for God's sake!..."

But the louder he spoke, the lower she bent her once proud, gay, but now shame-stricken head, and she became all limp, falling from the divan where she had been sitting to the floor at his feet; she would have fallen on the carpet if he had not held her.

"My God! Forgive me!" she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her breast.

(p. 149)

Wow. How romantic.