countdown!

(I realize this is the second time in about 10 days that I'm using the same graphic map. But, well, consider it a stand-in scene setter for now. Also, thanks a million to Sarah for sending links to info about the north -- much appreciated!!)

I can't decide whether I'm running away from summer or running toward the sun. But in a matter of days I will be in a place where the sun sets at 1 a.m. (and rises at 3 a.m.) and the temperature barely notches past 10C (if I'm lucky).

Such an adventure.

For inspiration, I've already packed The Sweet Edge and Late Nights on Air. The latter novel, funnily enough, comes up again and again as I make preparations to meet people up north. They keep mentioning the lure of the Territories, people's particular interest in the area at the moment, and the fact Elizabeth Hay won a Giller for her descriptions.

I'm also packing along Norwegian Wood, which I am still loving. Even if the author is making fun of the reader:

"'You've got this funny way of talking,' she said. 'Don't tell me you're trying to imitate that boy in Catcher in the Rye?'

'No way!' I said with a smile.

Reiko smiled too, cigarette in mouth. 'You are a good person, though. I can tell that much from looking at you. I can tell these things after seven years of watching people come and go here: there are people who can open their hearts and people who can't. You're one of the ones who can. Or, more precisely, you can if you want to.'" (p. 131)

I have to admit I don't think Haruki Murakami's work reads at all like J.D. Salinger's. But perhaps that is something in the translation....

I will admit there's a certain baffled naivete to Toru Watanabe as a main character that brings to mind Holden Caulfield. But I like Toru approximately 100 per cent more, even when he wanders into unusual circumstances I almost can't fathom.

Okay, friends. That's all from me for now. Take a look at this, though -- I think it'll make you smile on a totally unrelated note.

Also, I won't be here, but book club date's been set for Sunday. I look forward to reading and posting reviews of the book.... hint, hint....

let's get it started

(Yes, I think I'm hilarious if I can title a blog in such a way as to leave a song stuck in your head, dear reader. How to get rid of the song, you ask? I suggest Yellow Submarine, of course. Or maybe Sarah Silverman, since you can find this virtually everywhere.)

So, I'm just 60 pages into What is the What, and I'm torn.

It's written so well, but somehow seems like a slow start. It's hard to call it a slow start when the main character is bound and robbed in his American apartment -- I'm not ruining anything for you, fellow book club members, as this happens in the first 10 pages -- but I really want to get to Africa. I want to get to what happens to the Sudanese Lost Boys, to the story. I'm feeling slightly sidelined by the main character's memories of his daydreams from when he was a child.

Also, every time I read the words "TV Boy," I think of "Sick Boy." And then I think of Ewan McGregor (but not, ironically, Jonny Lee Miller), and then I've lost focus altogether.

Where was I? What was I saying?

Hm. In other news....

• Alice Hoffman has a new book coming out this spring. This is very exciting. I love Hoffman; she can make a strawberry seem fascinating, mysterious and somehow ghostly. A summer's day, in her hands, is shadowed by danger. A clear night is a dream. The moon has power. I can't wait to read this.
• While I have given up on Jennifer Crusie's blog, I appreciate it when an author has a full list of upcoming projects.
• I can find nothing new on another favourite author, Ann-Marie MacDonald. This makes me sad.
• Quarterlife apparently did very poorly in its television premiere last week. I didn't watch it either, but that's mostly because I'm addicted to its internet presence. I was especially addicted during the writer's strike, but even now I tune in every Sunday and Thursday. Even if it's horrifically overdramatic at times. But I think the hero and heroine, Dylan and Eric, remind me so much of people I've known (and The Sweet Edge, actually) and been and mocked that I can't help but enjoy.

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.

the sexes 2

I like to think men and women aren't really that different.

At the end of the day, I think we all say what we mean. Except when we don't. Men have just as many games as women do. I have a buddy who debates "openers" and "closers" -- the shirts he wears on his first date versus the shirts he wears when he thinks he's finally got the girl. (I've actually never seen his closer. I think it's maroon, though.)

In a time of constant Seinfeld and Sex and the City reruns, when the difference between Maxim and Cosmo is negligible, how many differences could there be?

But reading Alison Pick's The Sweet Edge, I was struck by how similar the main male character is to so many boys I've known.

Page by page, I fell a little in love with this Adam, with his need to go out to the middle of nowhere to find himself. His self-importance, his fear of being alone as he casts off all the things that make him part of something else.

Adam doesn't care what people think of him. He assumes most people are unintelligent. Whereas Ellen gives others the benefit of the doubt. She allows their judgments. She makes a space in her chest for their opinions and she accepts them. But under this she is hardened. There is something frozen at her centre.... (p. 38)

I was moved by this Ellen, left to fend for herself in the stink of a summer in Toronto. Ellen, who had to swim through the muggy heat to find herself, too.

Adam can afford to brood because his life has been easy. He is a nice boy with a nice family and nothing bad ever happens to him. To live close to him is to brush up against contentment. It is like a flashlight: she can see by it briefly, but it shows how her darkness compares. (p. 15)

Some of the remembered dialogue in Pick's poetic novel made me laugh so hard; a conversation between the couple that starts with Ellen asking Adam to take out the garbage. He begins discussing reincarnation. Finally, sick of hearing him talk, she asks when he plans to take out the garbage.

At other moments, I was physically uncomfortable. Pick's writing made me remember every time I felt as though my life were being twisted and torn apart. But slowly, through quiet, calculated attrition. Through soft words weighted by their cruelty.

This moment: These are the things you say when your lover of three years cheats on you. But deep down she isn't surprised. She thinks it's par for the course. Deep down, she thinks she deserves it. (p. 90)

Perhaps it's generational, perhaps it's my poor taste in men. But the book made me wonder whether men and women are entirely too different.

It made me wonder what a man would think of the same stories.

He has come to the wilderness with a belief in osmosis, with a belief that getting close to something makes you part of it, or makes it part of you. But getting close doesn't help. It only highlights the distance that will always be there. Learning to bear this distance is his task. (p. 227)

the sexes

I am fascinated by the idea of happy endings. I'm not sure I believe in them; long before Gregory Maguire came along, I had my doubts everything in Cinderella's or Snow White's worlds were perfect and settled post-The End.

Alison Pick's The Sweet Edge, at first, explores a young couple's relationship over a summer split up. He is in the Northwest Territories, she is in Toronto. The geography of their division is more than a titch symbolic; it plays on her insecurities. It makes you wonder if two people so different can ever find a place in their heads to meet in the middle.

I love this play between the main characters, Ellen and Adam:

In January, Ellen says she wants to go to the ballet.
What's playing?
She can't remember.
You just like the idea of the ballet, he says.
I like the ballet and I like the idea of it.
You mean you like the idea of yourself liking it.
Everyone likes the idea of themselves, she says. We all invest in our own self-image.
Adam doesn't say anything but they both know what he is thinking. He believes fiercely in something more organic than self-image, in something more cloaked and interior. (p.27-28)

*source of picture