on book clubs and snobbery

Dear Jocelyn Bowie:

We totally don't know each other, which is probably a good thing, as you apparently hate book clubs.

Which, of course, explains why things didn't work out so well for you. It appears you joined a book club in your new town for the sake of networking, which was probably your first mistake. Book clubs aren't about making business connections, they are about eating good food and making new friends and enjoying general awesomeness.

You got all snobberiffic about your new friends' book picks. I kind of get that. We've all had those moments. I recently got totally high school because a co-clubber chose The Catcher in the Rye, and I followed up his selection with Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. It was a bad move. All revenge-y, very ninth grade. But generally, I am in a book club so that I can read stuff I would never think of picking up on my own. If I only wanted to read books I expect to like, why would I be in a book club?

(Imagine all the beautiful works I would have missed if not for book club? Like Sweetness in the Belly? Black Bird? The Time in Between?)

But, Miss Bowie, did you really have to give an interview to the New York Times mocking the hell out of your former fellow book clubbers? If you think you were being polite when you told them you weren't into fiction, you totally scratched that by telling the New York Times you lied. People, like, read that newspaper, eh? All over the world.

Not cool, dude. And the Library Girl glasses only make you seem more pretentious. But maybe I'm the only person in North America who read this article and felt the need to share?

Sincerely,
Assy McJudgesalot

annual navel gaze

My favourite books of 2007:




Looks like a short pile, you're thinking. And yes, there are a few missing. Most notably Black Bird, by Michel Basilieres. This is because I send almost all book club books (um, not the one by Judy Blume) to my friend who moves to non-English countries where Canadian literature, in particular, is difficult to find. (Except Atwood, I guess. But I wonder how Atwood translates to Eastern European sensibilities? Or South Korean ones?)

(Um, another interruption. CBC is playing Bridget Jones's Diary again, and they actually SKIP the part at the end when Bridget says, "Nice boys don't kiss like that," and Mark says, "Oh yes they fucking do." Or something like that. My defense on this one is I've not necessarily memorized all the lines so much as the Van Morrison song at the end just skipped rather noticeably.)

Back to my points....

Big surprise of the year? I liked Nick Hornby. Not enough to ever try Fever Pitch again, but certainly enough to try About A Boy, for example.

Other discoveries.... Short stories can be inspiring, rather than boring. (I maintain the problem with Charlotte Gill's book was it felt like a paint-by-numbers, this-is-how-you-win-an-award collection of stories. I'm sure I'm wrong. And I'm probably just jealous.)

.... I can get through a year without reading a single Atwood novel. I feel kind of sad, though.

.... I didn't actually include Carol Off's Bitter Chocolate in my eye-pleasing pile here, but I loved that book. And a year without chocolate wasn't bad at all. Which is good, because I'm now entering Year 2.

No surprises: A soppy romance by an Irish writer was fun to read in about 24 hours. Still looking forward to the movie, even though the Americans will probably ruin it. And, a second soppy romance written by the same writer was even more fun to read in even less than 24 hours.

The author whose next work I'm most looking forward to? Alison Pick's. Read The Sweet Edge, people.

on marriage and children

I'm still sorting through Black Bird, the work of M. Basilieres -- I can't decide if the author is like me, an English-speaking French-Canadian with a dose of guilt, or like something else. An Englishman with a French name who carries a dose of resentment.

I'll have more on that later.

For now, the words of Grandfather:

"When I was old enough to marry I was told that love is what makes us human, different from the animals, that love was the supreme expression of the union of two souls. But after I was first wed I discovered the trap a marriage could be, the endless lifelong series of obligations and compromises that keep us from being ourselves for ourselves. I was told that children were our way to immortality, but I learned that their disappointments and resentments were a sure road to the death of my soul." (p. 218)

This book is nothing if not positive.

who's afraid of a late fee?

Coworker: Black Bird is really hard to find.
Me: Try Audrey's? Or maybe Chapters? (Because I'm helpful like that, with the pointing out of the obvious.)
Coworker: I think they're sold out.
Me: I wonder if a library would have it? I don't do libraries, but you know.
Coworker: You don't do libraries? You live across the street from one.
Me: I don't like giving stuff back.

So.... yeah.... good luck to my coworker on finding Black Bird, because clearly I'm no help.

And, in the meantime, I've bought yet another book. It's like my wallet climbs out of my purse of its own volition and hands its contents over to clerks, always in exchange for books. Or food. Or shoes. Why don't the clerks say no? Can't they tell the crazy lady before them has a nervous tick that pushes her hand and money toward them? It's inexplicable.

Anyway, I'm actually a century behind everyone else because I didn't realize Emily Carr wrote books. I know. And I'm from British Columbia, too, so really a failure to everything.

But, what grabbed me (for $2.50 at Wee Book Inn, so hey, look at me, being all responsible with the cash) was that Carr didn't write stories. She wrote intensely personal essays, really, that put you back in British Columbia. Back in historic, untouched, before Vancouver went boom and every place else followed, British Columbia.

From Klee Wyck:

I was sketching in a remote Indian village when I first saw her. The village was one of those that the Indians use only for a few months in each year; the rest of the time it stands empty and desolate. I went there in one of its empty times, in a drizzling dusk....
Water was in the air, half mist, half rain. (p. 32 but in the Clarke, Irwin & Co. Ltd. 1962 paperback edition)

Take that, Roughing it in the Bush.

P.S. As I was flipping through this wee, 111-page publication, I noticed it was once the property of Alberta Correspondence School's library. Which means I am not the first reader who couldn't stand to give a book back. Take that, public libraries designed to benefit everyone and really just all-round better the community.

to laugh, to cry

For now I'll reserve comment on our book club's latest selection, as I am but fifty pages into it.

But I love Michel Basilieres' narrative in Black Bird, which stops and starts as if translated from the bizarre quirk of Quebecois culture it captures:

"She'd married him because he'd made an effort to impress her and convince her of his sincerity, and she'd never before been shown that sincerity was as easily discarded as an empty cigarette package. The rest of her life had been spent trying to make up to her children for so carelessly choosing their father, and overcoming her own disappointment, which he seemed to insist on reinforcing daily. He had the habit of reading aloud from the newspaper the story of some other family's tragedy and laughing at the details; of carelessly leaving pornographic magazines around the house where the children, her friends, and she could see them; of not replying to her questions....
And in the end, the example of her strength in the face of his power was the legacy she would leave her children." (p. 3-4)

This works because of the short sentences. It makes me laugh out loud, and wonder at the loneliness it evokes.


*source of picture